THE 



CHARACTER OF JESUS: 

FORBIDDING 

HIS POSSIBLE CLASSIFICATION 
WITH MEN. 




HORACE BUSH ft ELL. 



4^ 



CHAKLES SCRIBNERT^^i^fr*gfREET. 
1861. 




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United 
States for the Southern District of New York. 



JOHN F. TROW, 
STEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTYPER, 

46, 48 & 50 Greene Street. 



Geo. Russell Printer 



PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT. 



In this little volume we reprint, 
with consent of the Author, the tenth 
chapter of his Treatise, Nature and 
the Supernatural. 

This chapter, taken as a sketch of 
the self-evidencing, superhuman char- 
acter of Christ, has attracted much 
attention ; and we have been solicited, 
many times over, in the various notices 



4 



Advertisement. 



and reviews of the book, as well as 
by private readers, to give it to the 
public by itself. This, too, we do the 
more readily, that it makes a complete 
whole by itself, and is in a style to be 
read by multitudes who probably will 
not undertake to master the more elab- 
orate and difficult argument, of which 
it is only a subordinate member. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

We assume nothing reported of him to be true, . . 11 
The only character that has a perfect youth, . □ 15 



The picture stands by itself 13 

The absurd pictures given of infant prodigies, . . 21 



Jesus the only great character that holds a footing of 
innocence, 25 



The only religious character that disowns repentance, 31 



He unites characters difficult to be united, 
The astonishing pretensions of Jesus. 
His pretensions enter also into his actions, 



35 
41 
44 



6 



Contents. 



PAGE 

Nobody offended by these pretensions, ... 46 
"What mere man could support such pretensions? . 48 



Peculiar in the passive virtues, 50 

Does not falter in the common trials of existence, . 53 

His passion, no mere human martyrdom, . . 57 - 

His agony misplaced, taken as being only a man's, . 59 

It is, humanly speaking, excessive, . . . 60 - 

The pathology is divine, 62 

His defence before Pilate, all that could be made, . 63 

He undertakes what is humanly impossible, . . 65 

He assumes to set up the kingdom of God among men, 67 

His plan covers ages of time, ...... 69 

Such attempts not human, 72 



He takes rank with the humblest orders of society, . 74 
No great social architect ever saw the wisdom of it, 78 



And still he raises no partisan feeling, .... 82 
No human leader in this, 83 

Original and independent as no man is, . . . .87 
Teaches by no human method, 91 



Contents. 7 



PAGE 

Warped by no desire to gain assent, .... 92 

Comprehensive, nnder no human conditions, . . 94 

Could not hold a one-sided view, 95 

Clear of all the current superstitions, .... 98 

But no liberalise 102 

His simplicity is perfect, 105 

Shining as pure light, 107 

Adequately teaches God even to the humble, . . 103 

His morality is not artistic, Ill 

But intuitive and original, 113 

Never anxious for success, 115 



Eaised and made sacred by familiarity, . . . 118 
Our experience of men reversed in him, . . . 123 



Eecapitulation, 125 

Did such a being actually exist? 129 

Was he a sinless character ? 133 

Mr. Parker's estimate of him, 136 

Mr. Hennel's estimate, 138 

Faults charged 139 

Faults supposed and intimated, 141 

His invective against the Pharisees, . 144 



Milton's right of invective, 145 



8 



Contents. 



PAGE 

The fact of his miracles inferred, .... 149 

His errand is order itself, 153 

No disruption of law or system, 154 

The mythical hypothesis impossible, .... 157 

Their success Mr. Parker concedes, .... 159 

The miracles are in place in a gospel, .... 162 

Miracles rejected, so is Jesus the Grand Miracle, . 165 

Jesus himself the all-sufficient evidence, . . . 16T 



THE 



CHARACTER OF JESUS. 



It is the grand peculiarity of the 
sacred writings, that they deal in 
supernatural events and transactions, 
and show the fact of a celestial insti- 
tution finally erected on earth, which 
is fitly called the kingdom of God ; 
because it shows Hira reigning, as a 
Eegenerator and Eestorer of the 
broken order of the world. Christi- 



10 



Character of Jesus. 



anity is, in this view, no mere scheme 
of doctrine, or of ethical practice, but 
is instead a kind of miracle, a power 
out of nature and above, descending 
into it ; a historically supernatural 
movement on the world, that is visibly 
entered into it, and organized to be an 
institution in the person of Jesus 
Christ. He, therefore, is the central 
figure and power, and with him the 
entire fabric either stands or falls. 

To this central figure, then, we now 
turn ourselves ; and, as no proof beside 
the light is necessary to show that the 
sun shines, so we shall find that Jesus 
proves himself by his own self-evidence. 
The simple inspection of his life and 
character will suffice to show that he 
can not be classified with mankind 



Character of Jesus. 



II 



(man though he be), any more than 
what we call his miracles can be clas- 
sified with mere natural events. The 
simple demonstrations of his life and 
spirit are the sufficient attestation of 
his own profession, when he says — " I 
am from above" — " I came down from 
heaven." 

Let us not be misunderstood. We 
do not assume the truth of the narra- 
tive by w r hich the manner 

We assume 

and facts of the life of Jesus ™^ g of h £ 

& _ . to be true. 

are reported to us ; tor this, 
by the supposition, is the matter in 
question. We only assume the repre- 
sentations themselves, as being just 
what they are, and discover their 
necessary truth, in the transcendent, 
wondrously self-evident, picture of 



12 Character of Jesus. 



divine excellence and beauty exhibited 
in them. We take up the account of 
Christ,, in the New Testament, just as 
we would any other ancient writing, or 
as if it were a manuscript just brought 
to light in some ancient library. We 
open the book, and discover in it four 
biographies of a certain remarkable 
character, called Jesus Christ. He is 
miraculously born of Mary, a virgin of 
Galilee, and declares himself, without 
scruple, that he came out from God. 
Finding the supposed history made up, 
in great part, of his mighty acts, and 
not being disposed to believe in mira- 
cles and marvels, we should soon dis- 
miss the book as a tissue of absurdities 
too extravagant for belief, were we not 
struck with the sense of something 



Character of Jesus. 



18 



very peculiar in the character of this 
remarkable person. Having our atten- 
tion arrested thus by the impression 
made on our respect, we are put on 
inquiry, and the more we study it, the 
more wonderful, as a character, it ap- 
pears. And before we have done, it 
becomes, in fact, the chief wonder of 
. the story ; lifting all the other wonders 
into order and intelligent proportion 
round it, and making one compact and 
glorious wonder of the whole picture ; 
a picture shining in its own clear sun- 
light upon us, as the truest of all truths 
— Jesus, the Divine Word, coming out 
from God, to be incarnate with us, and 
be the vehicle of God and salvation to 
the race. 

On the single question, therefore, of 

i 



14 Character of Jesus. 



the more than human character of Je- 
sus, we propose, in perfect confidence, 
to rest a principal argument for Chris- 
tianity as a supernatural institution ; 
for, if there be in Jesus a character 
which is not human, then has some- 
thing broken into the world that is not 
of it, and the spell of unbelief is 
broken. 

Not that Christianity might not be 
a supernatural institution, if Jesus 
were only a man ; for many prophets 
and holy men, as we believe, have 
brought forth to the world communi- 
cations that are not from themselves, 
but were received by inspirations from 
God. There are several grades, too, 
of the supernatural, as already inti- 
mated ; the supernatural human, the 



Character of Jesus. 15 



' supernatural prophetic, the supernat- 
ural demonic and angelic, the super- 
natural divine. Christ, we shall see, 
is the supernatural manifested in the 
highest grade or order ; viz., the di- 
vine. 



We observe, then, as a first pecu- 
liarity at the root of his character, that 
he begins life with a perfect 

& 1 The only 

youth. His childhood is an tff^ll 
unspotted, and, withal, a y ° Uh ' 
kind of celestial flower. The notion 
of a superhuman or celestial childhood, 
the most difficult of all things to be 
conceived, is yet successfully drawn by 
a few simple touches. He is announ- 
ced beforehand as " that Holy Thing ; " 
a beautiful and powerful stroke, to 



16 Character of Jesus, 
. 

raise our expectation to the level of a 
nature so mysterious. In his child- 
hood, everybody loves him. Using 
words of external description, he is 
shown growing up in favor with God 
and man, a child so lovely and beauti- 
ful, that heaven and earth appear to 
smile upon him together. So, when it 
is added that the child grew and waxed 
strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, 
and, more than all, that the grace or 
beautifying power of God was upon 
him, we look, as on the unfolding of a 
sacred flower, and seem to scent a fra- 
grance wafted on us from other worlds. 
Then, at the age of twelve, he is 
found among the great learned men of 
the day, the doctors of the temple, 
hearing what they say, and asking 



Character of Jesus. 17 

them questions. And this, without 
■ any word that indicates forwardness or 
' pertness in the child's manner, such as 

some Christian Babbi, or silly and 

I 

credulous devotee, would certainly have 
added. The doctors are not offended, 
as by a child too forward or wanting in 
modesty, they are only amazed that 
such a degree of understanding can 
dwell in one so young and simple. 
His mother finds him there among 
them, and begins to expostulate with 
him. His reply is very strange ; it 
must, she is sure, have some deep 
meaning that corresponds with his 
I mysterious birth, and the sense he has 
ever given her of a something strangely 
peculiar in his ways ; and she goes 
home keeping his saying in her heart, 



18 



Character of Jesus. 



and guessing vainly what his thought 
may be. Mysterious, holy secret ! which 
this mother hides in her bosom ; that 
her holy thing, her child whom she has 
watched, during the twelve years of his 
celestial childhood, now begins to speak 
of being " about his Father's business/' 
in words of dark enigma, which she 
cannot fathom. 

Now we do not say, observe, that 
there is one word of truth in these 
touches of narrative. We 
stjp!s p t>7 U it- only say that, whether they 
be fact or fiction, here is giv- 
en the sketch of a perfect and sacred 
childhood, not of a simple, lovely, 
ingenuous, and properly human child- 
hood, such as the poets love to sketch, 
but of a sacred and celestial child- 



Character of Jesus. 



19 



: hood. In this respect, the early char- 
: acter of Jesus is a picture that stands 
: by itself. In no other case, that we 
; remember, has it ever entered the 
: mind of a biographer, in drawing a 
; character, to represent it as beginning 
with a spotless childhood. The child- 
hood of the great human characters, if 
given at all, is commonly represented, 
according to the uniform truth, as be- 
ing more or less contrary to the man- 
ner of their mature age ; and never as 
being strictly one with it, except in 
those cases of inferior eminence where 
the kind of distinction attained to is 
that of some mere ^prodigy, and not a 
character of greatness in action, or of 
moral "excellence. In all the higher 
ranges of character, the excellence por- 



20 Character of Jesus. 



trayed is never the simple unfolding of 
a harmonious and perfect beauty con- 
tained in the germ of childhood, but it 
is a character formed by a process of 
rectification, in which many follies are 
mended and distempers removed ; in 
which confidence is checked by defeat, 
passion moderated by reason, smart- 
ness sobered by experience. Com-, 
monly a certain pleasure is taken in 
showing how the many wayward sallies 
of the boy are, at length, reduced by 
discipline to the character of wisdom, 
justice, and public heroism, so much 
admired. 

Besides, if any writer, of almost any 
age, will undertake to describe, not 
merely a spotless, but a superhuman 
or celestial childhood, not having the 



Character of Jesus. 



21 



reality before him, he must be some- 
what more than human himself, if he 
does not pile together a mass of clumsy 
exaggerations, and draw and overdraw, 
till neither heaven nor earth can find 
any verisimilitude in the picture. 

Neither let us omit to notice what 
ideas the Eabbis and learned doctors 
of this age were able, in 

° ' The absurd 

fact, to furnish, when set- SSEtgS 
ting forth a remarkable 
childhood. Thus Josephus, drawing 
on the teachings of the Rabbis, tells 
how the infant Moses, when the king 
of Egypt took him out of his daugh- 
ter's arms, and playfully put the dia- 
dem on his head, threw it pettishly 
down and stamped on it. And when 
Moses was three years old, he tells us 



22 Character of Jesus, 



that the child had grown so tall, and 
exhibited such a wonderful beauty of 
countenance, that people were obliged, 
as it were, to stop and look at him as 
he was carried along the road, and 
were held fast by the wonder, gazing 
till he was out of sight. See, too, what 
work is made of the childhood of Jesus 
himself, in the Apocryphal gospels. 
These are written by men of so nearly 
the same era, that we may discover, in 
thsir embellishments, what kind of a 
childhood it was in the mere invention 
of the time to make out. While the 
gospels explicitly say that Jesus 
wrought no miracles till his public 
ministry began, and that he made his 
beginning in the miracle of Cana, these 
are ambitious to make him a great 



Character of Jesus. 23 


prodigy in his childhood. They tell 
how, on one occasion, he pursued in 
his anger, the other children, who re- 
fused to play with him, and turned 
them into kids ; how, on another, when 
a child accidentally ran against him, 
he was angry, and killed him by his 
mere word ; how, on another, Jesus 
had a dispute with his teacher over 
the alphabet^ and when the teacher 
struck him, how he crushed him, 
withered his arm, and threw him 
down dead. Finally, Joseph tells Ma- 
ty that they must keep him within 
doors, for everybody perishes against 
whom he is excited. His mother sends 
him to the well for water, and having 
broken his pitcher, he brings the water 
in his cloak. He goes into a dyer's 



24 Character of Jesus. 



shop, when the dyer is out, and throws 
all the cloths he finds into a vat of one 
color ; but, when they are taken out, 
behold, they are all dyed of the precise 
color that was ordered. He commands 
a palm-tree to stoop down and let him 
pluck the fruit, and it obeys. When 
he is carried down into Egypt, all the 
idols fall down wherever he passes, and 
the lions and leopards gather round 
him in a harmless company. This the 
Gospel of the Infancy gives, as a pic- 
ture of the wonderful childhood of J e- 
sus. How unlike that holy flower of 
paradise, in the true gospels, which a 
few simple touches make to bloom in 
beautiful self-evidence before us ! 

Passing now to the character of Je- 



Character of Jesus. 25 



sus in his maturity, we discover, at 
once, that there is an element in it 
which distinguishes it from 

i . . Jesus the on- 

all human Characters, VIZ., ly great char- 
acter that holds 

innocence. By this we a footin s of in - 

J nocence. 

mean, not that he is actu- 
ally sinless ; that will be denied, and, 
therefore, must not here be assumed. 
We mean that, viewed externally, he 
is a perfectly harmless being^ actuated 
by no destructive passions, gentle to 
inferiors, doing ill or injury to none. 
The figure of a Lamb, which never 
was, or could be applied to any of the 
great human characters, without an 
implication of weakness fatal to all 
respect, is yet, with no such effect, ap- 
plied to him. We associate weakness 
with innocence, and the association is 



26 Character of Jesus. 

so powerful, that no human writer 
would undertake to sketch a great 
character on the basis of innocence, or ) 
would even think it possible. We 
predicate innocence of infancy ; but to 
be a perfectly harmless, guileless man, 
never doing ill even for a moment, we 
consider to be the same as to be a man 
destitute of spirit and manly force. 
But Christ accomplished the impossi- 
ble. Appearing in all the grandeur 
and majesty of a superhuman man- 
hood, he is able still to unite the im- 
pression of innocence, with no apparent 
diminution of his sublimity. It is, in 
fact, the distinctive glory of his char- 
acter, that it seems to be the natural 
unfolding of a divine innocence ; a 
pure celestial childhood, amplified by 



Character of Jesus. 



27 



growth. We feel the power of this 
strange combination, but we have so 
great difficulty in conceiving it, or 
holding our minds to the conception, 
that we sometimes subside or descend to 
the human level, and empty the char- 
acter of Jesus of the strange element 
unawares. We read, for example, his 
terrible denunciations against the Phar- 
isees, and are shocked by the violent, 
fierce sound they have on our mortal 
lips ; not perceiving that the offence is 
in us, and not in him. We should 
suffer no such revulsion, did we only 
conceive them bursting out, as words 
of indignant grief, from the surcharged 
bosom of innocence ; for there is noth- 
ing so bitter as the offence that inno- 
cence feels, when stung by hypocrisy 



28 Character of Jesus. 



and a sense of cruelty to the poor. So, 
when he drives the money-changers 
from the temple, we are likely to leave 
out the only element that saves him 
from a look of violence' and passion. 
Whereas, it is the very point of the 
story, not that he, as by mere force, 
can drive so many men, but that so 
many are seen retiring before the moral 
power of one, a mysterious being, in 
whose face and form the indignant 
flush of innocence reveals a tremen- 
dous feeling, they can no wise compre- 
hend, much less are able to resist. 

Accustomed to no such demonstra- 
tions of vigor and decision in the inno- 
cent human characters, and having it as 
our way to set them down contemptu- 
ously, without further consideration, as 



Character of Jesus. 29 



" Incapable and shallow innocents,"— 

we turn the indignant fire of Jesus 
into a fire of malignity ; whereas, it 
should rather be conceived that Jesus 
here reveals his divinity, by what so 
powerfully distinguishes Grod himself, 
when he clothes his goodness in the 
tempests and thunders of nature. De- 
cisive, great, and strong, Christ is yet 
all this, even the more sublimely, that 
he is invested, withal, in the lovely, 
but humanly feeble garb of innocence. 
And that this is the true conception^ 
is clear, in the fact that no one ever 
thinks of him as weak, and no one fails 
to be somehow impressed with a sense 
of innocence by his life. When his 
enemies are called to show what evil 
or harm he hath done, they can specify 



30 Character of Jesus. 



nothing, save that he has offended 
their bigotry. Even Pilate, when he 
gives him up, confesses that he finds 
nothing in him to blame, and, shud- 
dering with apprehensions he cannot 
subdue, washes his hands to be clear 
of the innocent blood ! Thus he dies, 
a being holy, harmless, undefiled. And 
when he hangs, a bruised flower, droop- 
ing on his cross, and the sun above is 
dark, and the earth beneath shudders 
with pain, what have we in this fune- 
ral grief of the worlds, but a fit honor 
paid to the sad majesty of his divine 
innocence ? 

We pass now to his religious char- 
acter, which, we shall discover, has the 
remarkable distinction that it proceeds 



Character of Jesus. 



31 



from a point exactly opposite to that 
which, is the root, or radical element 
in the religious character 

p tt ■ a. i The onlv ro- 

oi men. Human piety be- Kgions charac- 
ter that d.is- 

igins with repentance. It is owns re P ent > 

° 1 ance. 

the effort of a being, im- 
plicated in wrong and writhing un- 
der the stings of guilt, to come unto 
God. The most righteous, or even 
self-righteous, men. blend expressions 
of sorrow and vows of new obedience 
with their exercises. But Christ, in 
the character given him, never ac- 
knowledges sin. It is the grand pecu- 
liarity of his piety, that he never re- 
grets any thing that he has done or 
been ; expresses, nowhere, a single 
feeling of compunction, or the least 
sense of unworthiness. On the con- 



32 



Character of Jesus. 



trary, he boldly challenges his accusers, 
in the question — Which of you con- 
vinceth me of sin ? and even declares, 
at the close of his life, in a solemn ap- 
peal to God, that he has given to men, 
unsullied, the glory divine that was 
deposited in him. 

Now the question is not whether 
Christ was, in fact, the faultless being, 
assumed in his religious character. 
All we have to notice here is, that he 
makes the assumption, makes it not 
only in words, but in the very tenor of 
his exercises themselves, and that by 
this fact his piety is radically distin- 
guished from all human piety. And 
no mere human creature, it is certain, 
could hold such a religious attitude, 
without shortly displaying faults that 



Character of Jesus, 



33 



would cover him with, derision, or ex- 
cesses and delinquencies that would 
even disgust his friends. Piety with- 
out one dash of repentance, one in- 
genuous confession of wrong, one tear, 
one look of contrition, one request to 
heaven for pardon — let any one of 
mankind try this kind of piety, and 
see how long it will be ere his right- 
eousness will prove itself to be the 
most impudent conceit ! how long be- 
fore his passions sobered by no con- 
trition, his pride kept down by no 
repentance, will tempt him into ab- 
surdities tint will turn his pretenses to 
mockery ! No sooner does any one of 
us begin to be self-righteous, than he 
begins to fall into outward sins that / 
shame his conceit. But, in the case 



34 



Character of Jesus, 



of Jesus, no such disaster follows. 
Beginning with an impenitent or un- 
repentant piety, he holds it to the end, 
and brings no visible stain upon it. 

Now, one of two things must be true. 
He was either sinless, or he was not. 
If sinless, what greater, more palpable 
exception to the law of human develop- 
ment, than that a perfect and stainless 
being has for once lived in the flesh ! 
If not, which is the supposition re- 
quired of those who deny every thing 
above the range of human develop- 
ment, then we have a man taking up a 
religion without repentance, a religion 
not human, but celestial, a style of 
piety never taught him in his child- 
hood, and never conceived or attempt- 
ed among men : more than this, a 



Character of Jesus, 



6 0 



style of piety, withal, wholly unsuited 
to his real character as a sinner, hold- 
ing it as a figment of insufferable pre- 
sumption to the end of life, and that 
in a way of such unfaltering grace 
and beauty, as to command the uni- 
versal homage of the human race ! 
Could there be a wider deviation from 
all we know of mere human develop- 
ment ? 



He was also able perfectly to unite 
elements of character, that others find 
the greatest difficulty in 

& J He unites 

uniting, however unevenly f 1 ^^ d tfe 
and partially. He is never 
said to have laughed, and yet he never 
produces the impression of austerity, 
moroseness, sadness, or even of . being 



3o Character of Jesus. 

unhappy. On the contrary, he is de- 
scribed as one that appears to be com- 
monly filled with a sacred joy ; " re- 
joicing in spirit/' and leading to his 
disciples, in the hour of his departure, 
the bequest of his joy — " that they 
might have my joy fulfilled in them- 
selves/' We could not long en- 
dure a human being whose face was 
never moved by laughter, or relaxed 
by humorous play. What sympathy 
could we have with one who appears, 
in this manner, to have no human 
heart ? We could not even trust 
him. And yet we have sympathy with 
Christ ; for there is somewhere in him 
an ocean of deep joy, and we see that 
he is, in fact, only burdened w^ith his 
sympathy for us to such a degree, that 



Character of Jesus. 



37 



his mighty life is overcast and oppress- 
ed by the charge he has undertaken. 
His lot is the lot of privation ; he has 
no powerful friends ; he has not even 
where to lay his head. No human be- 
ing could appear in such a guise, with- 
out occupying us much with the sense 
of his affliction. We should be de- 
scending to him, as it were, in pity. 
But we never pity Christ, never think 
of him as struggling with the disad- 
vantages of a lower level, to surmount 
them. In fact, he does not allow us, af- 
ter all, to think much of his privations. 
We think of him more as a being of 
mighty resources, proving himself only 
the more sublimely, that he is in the 
guise of destitution. He is the most 
i unworldly of beings, having no desire 



38 Character of Jesus, 



at all for what the earth can give, too 
great to be caught with any long- 
ing for its benefits, impassible even to 
its charms, and yet there is no ascetic 
sourness or repugnance, no misan- 
thropic distaste in his manner ; as if 
he were bracing himself against the 
world to keep it off. The more closely 
he is drawn to other worlds, the more 
fresh and susceptible is he to the hu- 
manities of this. The little child is an 
image of gladness, which his heart 
leaps forth to embrace. The wedding 
and the feast and the funeral have all 
their cord of sympathy in his bosom. 
At the wedding he is clothed in con- 
gratulation, at the feast in doctrine, 
at the funeral in tears ; but no miser < 
was ever drawn to his money, with a 



Character of Jesus. 



39 



stronger desire, than he to worlds 
above the world. 

Men undertake to be spiritual, and 
they become ascetic ; or, endeavoring 
to hold a liberal view of the comforts 
and pleasures of society, they are soon 
buried in the world, and slaves to its 
fashions ; or, holding a scrupulous 
watch to keep out every particular 
sin, they become legal, and fall out of 
liberty ; or, charmed with the noble 
and heavenly liberty, they run to neg- 
ligence and irresponsible living ; so 
the earnest become violent, the fervent 
fanatical and censorious, the gentle 
waver, the firm turn bigots, the liberal 
grow lax, the benevolent ostentatious. 
Poor human infirmity can hold noth- 
ing steady. Where the pivot of right- 



40 



Character of Jesus. 



eousness is broken, the scales must 
needs slide off their balance. Indeed, 
it is one of the most difficult things 
which a cultivated Christian can at- 
tempt, only to sketch a theoretic view 
of character, in its true justness and 
proportion, so that a little more study, 
or a little more self-experience, will 
not require him to modify it. And yet 
the character of Christ is never modi- 
fied, even by a shade of rectification. 
It is one and the same throughout. 
He makes no improvements, prunes no 
extravagances, returns from no eccen- 
tricities. The balance of his charac- 
ter is never disturbed, or readjusted, 
and the astounding assumption on 
which it is based is never shaken, even 
by a suspicion that he falters in it. 



Character of Jesus. 41 



There is yet another point related 
to this, in which the attitude of Jesus 
is even more distinct from 

, iii The aston- 

any that was ever taken by iswng preten- 
sions of Jesus. 

man, and is yet triumphant- 
ly sustained. I speak of the astonish- 
ing pretensions asserted concerning his 
person. Similar pretensions have some- 
times been assumed by maniacs, or in- 
sane persons, but never, so far as I 
know, by persons in the proper exer- 
cise of their reason. Certain it is that 
no mere man could take the same at- 
titude of supremacy towards the race, 
and inherent affinity or oneness with 
God, without fatally shocking the con- 
fidence of the world by his effrontery. 
Imagine a human creature saying to 
the world — " I came forth from the 



42 



Character of Jesus. 



Father" — " ye are from beneath, I am 
from above ; " facing all the intelli- 
gence and even the philosophy of the 
world, and saying, in bold assurance — 
"behold, a greater than Solomon is 
here " — " I am the light of the world " 
— " the way, the truth, and the life ; " 
publishing to all peoples and religions 
— " No man cometh to the Father, 
but by me ; " promising openly in his 
death — " I will draw all men unto 
me ; " addressing the Infinite Majesty, 
and testifying — " I have glorified thee 
on the earth ; " calling to the human 
race — " Come unto me;" " follow 
me ; " laying his hand upon all the 
dearest and most intimate affections 
of life, and demanding a precedent 
love — " he that loveth father or moth- 



Character of Jesus. 43 

er more than me, is not worthy of me." 
Was there ever displayed an example 
of effrontery and spiritual conceit so 
preposterous ? Was there ever a man 
that dared put himself on the world in 
such pretensions ? — as if all light was 
in him ; as if to follow him and be 
worthy of him was to be the conclu- 
sive or chief excellence of mankind ! 
What but mockery and disgust does 
he challenge as the certain reward of 
his audacity ! But no one is offended 
with Jesus on this account, and what 
is a sure test of his success, it is re- 
markable that, of all the readers of 
the gospel, it probably never even oc- 
curs to one in a hundred thousand, to 
blame his conceit, or the egregious 
vanity of his pretensions. 



44 



Character of Jesus. 



Nor is there any thing disputable in 
these pretensions, least of all, any trace 
of myth or fabulous tradi- 

His preten- " 

mSX^ tion. They enter into the 
very web of his ministry, so 
that if thev are extracted and nothing 
left transcending mere humanity, noth- 
ing at all is left. Indeed, there is a 
tacit assumption, continually main- 
tained that far exceeds the range of 
these formal pretensions. He says — 
" I and the Father that sent me." 
What figure would a man present in 
such language — I and the Father? 
He goes even beyond this, and appa- 
rently without any thought of excess 
or presumption ; classing himself with 
the Infinite Majesty in a common plu- 
ral, he says — We will come unto him, 



Character of Jesus. 



45 



and make our abode with him. Imag- 
ine any, the greatest and holiest of 
mankind, any prophet, or apostle, say- 
ing we, of himself and the Great Jeho- 
vah ! What a conception did he give 
us concerning himself, when he as- 
sumed the necessity of such informa- 
tion as this — " my Father is greater 
than I ; " and above all, when he calls 
himself, as he often does, in a tone of 
condescension — Cc the Son of Man." 
See him also on the top of Olivet, look- 
ing down on the guilty city and weep- 
ing words of compassion like these— 
imagine some man weeping over Lon- 
don or New York, in the like — " How 
often would I have gathered thy chil- 
dren together as a hen doth gather her 
chickens under her wings, and ye 



46 



Character of Jesus. 



would not ! " See him also in the sup- 
per, instituting a rite of remembrance 
for himself, a scorned, outcast man, 
and saying — " this is my body " — 
" this do in remembrance of me/' 

I have dwelt thus on the transcend- 
ent pretensions of Jesus, because there 
is an argument here for his 

Nobody of- & 

|ese d pretend superhumanity, which can 
not be resisted. For eigh- 
teen hundred years, these prodigious 
assumptions have been published and 
preached to a world that is quick to 
lay hold of conceit, and bring down 
the lofty airs of pretenders, and yet, 
during all this time, whole nations of 
people, composing as well the learned 
and powerful as the ignorant and hum- 
ble, have paid their homage to the 



Character of Jesus. 



47 



name of .T^«us, detecting never any 
disagreement between his merits and 
his pretensions, offended never by any 
thought of his extravagance. In which 
we have absolute proof that he practi- 
cally maintains his amazing assump- 
tions ! Indeed it will even be found 
that, in the common apprehension of 
the race, he maintains the merit of a 
most peculiar modesty, producing no 
conviction more distinctly, than that 
of his intense lowliness and humility. 
His worth is seen to be so great, his 
authority so high, his spirit so celes- 
tial, that instead of being offended by 
his pretensions, we take the impression 
of one in whom it is even a condescen- 
sion to breathe our air. I say not that 
his friends and followers take this im- 



48 



Character of Jesus. 



pression, it is received as naturally and 
irresistibly by unbelievers. I do not 
recollect any skeptic or infidel who lias 
even thought to accuse him as a con- 
ceited person, or to assault him in this, 
the weakest and absurclest, if not the 
strongest and holiest, point of his char- 
acter. 

Come now, all ye that tell us in 
your wisdom of the mere natural hu- 
manity of Jesus, and help 

What mere J ; L 

£>rt suchpr£ US t0 find h0W 1* is > tliat 11(3 
tensions? . , , -i -i i 

is only a natural develop- 
ment of the human ; select your best 
and wisest character ; take the range, 
if you will, of all the great philos- 
ophers and saints, and choose out one, 
that is most competent ; or if, per- 
chance, some one of you may imagine 



m.' ■ 

Character of Jesus, 



49 



that he is himself about upon a level 
with Jesus (as we hear that some of 
you do), let him come forward in this 
trial and say — " follow me " — " be 
worthy of me " — " I am the light of 
the world " — u ye are from beneath, I 
am from above " — " behold a greater 
than Solomon is here ; " take on all 
these transcendent assumptions, and 
see how soon your glory will be sifted 
out of you by the detective gaze, and 
darkened by the contempt of mankind ! 
Why not ? is not the challenge fair ? 
Do you not tell us that you can say as 
divine things as he ? Is it not in you 
too, of course, to do what is human ? 
are you not in the front rank of human 
developments ? do you not rejoice in 
the power to rectify many mistakes 

4 



50 Character of Jesus, 



and errors in the words of J esus ? 
Give us then this one experiment, and 
see if it does not prove to you a truth 
that is of some consequence ; viz., that 
you are a man, and that Jesus Christ 
is — more. 

But there is also a passive side to 
the character of Jesus, which is equally 
peculiar and which likewise 

Peculiar in , , J . ' . T 

the passive vir- demands our attention. I 

tues. 

recollect no really great 
character in history, excepting such as 
may have been formed under Christi- 
anity, that can properly be said to 
have united the passive virtues, or to 
have considered them any essential 
part of a finished character. Socrates 
comes the nearest to such an impres- 



Character of Jesus. 51 



sion, and therefore most resembles 
Christ in the submissiveness of his 
death. It does not appear, however, 
that his mind had taken this turn pre- 
viously to his trial, and the submission 
he makes to the public sentence is, in 
fact, a refusal only to escape from the 
prison surreptitiously ; which he does, 
partly because he thinks it the duty of 
every good citizen not to break the 
laws, and partly, if we judge from his 
manner, because he is detained by a 
subtle pride ; as if it were something 
unworthy of a grave philosopher, to be 
stealing away, as a fugitive, from the 
laws and tribunals of his country. The 
Stoics, indeed, have it for one of their 
great principles, that the true wisdom 
of life consists in a passive power, viz., 



52 Character of Jesus. 



in being able to bear suffering rightly. 
But they mean by this, the bearing of 
suffering so as not to feel it ; a steel- 
ing of the mind against sensibility, and 
a raising of the will into such power as 
to drive back the pangs of life, or shake 
them off. But this, in fact, contains 
no allowance of passive virtue at all ; 
on the contrary, it is an attempt so 
to exalt the active powers, as even to 
exclude every sort of passion, or pas- 
sivity. And Stoicism corresponds, in 
this respect, with the general senti- 
ment of the world's great characters. 
They are such as like to see things in 
the heroic vein, to see spirit and cour- 
age breasting themselves against wrong, 
and, where the evil cannot be escaped 
by resistance, dying in a manner of 



Character of 'Jesus, 



5 3 



defiance. Indeed it has been the im- 
pression of the world generally, that 
patience, gentleness, readiness to suffer 
wrong without resistance, is but an- 
other name for weakness. 

But Christ, in opposition to all such 
impressions, manages to connect these 
non-resisting and gentle passivities 
with a character of the severest gran- 
deur and majesty ; and, what is more, 
convinces us that no truly great char- 
acter can exist without them. 

Observe him, first, in what may be 

called the common trials of existence. 

For if you will put a char- 
Does not fal- 

acter to the severest of all £^t££*; 

t„i i,i • , existence. 

tests, see whether it can 
bear without faltering, the little com- 
mon ills and hindrances of life. Many 



54 Character of Jesus. 



a man will go to his martyrdom, with 
a spirit of firmness and heroic compo- 
sure, whom a little weariness or nerv- 
ous exhaustion, some silly prejudice, or 
capricious opposition, would, for the 
moment, throw into a fit of vexation, 
or ill-nature. Great occasions rally 
great principles, and brace the mind to 
a lofty bearing, a bearing that is even 
above itself. But trials that make no 
occasion at all, leave it to show the 
goodness and beauty it has in its own 
disposition. And here precisely is the 
superhuman glory of Christ as a char- 
acter, that he is just as perfect, exhib- 
its just as great a spirit, in little trials 
as in great ones. In all the history of i 
his life, we are not able to detect the 
faintest indication that he slips or fal- 



Character of Jesus. 55 



ters. And this is the more remarkable, 
that he is prosecuting so great a work, 
with so great enthusiasm ; counting it 
his meat and drink, and pouring into 
it all the energies of his life. For when 
men have great works on hand, their 
very enthusiasm runs to impatience. 
"When thwarted or unreasonably hin- 
dered, their soul strikes fire against 
the obstacles they meet, they worry 
themselves at every hindrance, every 
disappointment, and break out in 
stormy and fanatical violence. But 
Jesus, for some reason, is just as even, 
just as serene, in all his petty vexa- 
tions, and hindrances, as if he had 
nothing on hand to do. A kind of 
sacred patience invests him every- 
where. Having no element of crude 



56 Character of Jesus. 

will mixed with his work, he is able, 
in all trial and opposition, to hold a 
condition of serenity above the clouds, 
and let them sail under him, without 
ever obscuring the sun. He is poor, 
and hungry, and weary, and despised, 
insulted by his enemies, deserted by 
his friends, but never disheartened, 
never fretted or ruffled. 

You see, meantime, that he is no 
Stoic ; he visibly feels every such ill 
as his delicate and sensitive nature 
must, but he has some sacred and 
sovereign good present, to mingle with 
his pains, which, as it were, naturally 
and without any self-watching, allays 
them. He does not seem to rule his 
temper, but rather to have none ; for 
temper, in the sense of passion, is a 



Character of Jesus. 57 



fury that follows the will, as the light- 
nings follow the disturbing forces of 
the winds among the clouds ; and ac- 
cordingly, where there is no self-will 
to roll up the clouds and hurl them 
through the sky, the lightnings hold 
their equilibrium, and are as though 
they were not. 

As regards what is called pre-emi- 
nently his passion, the scene of martyr- 
dom that closes his life, it 

His passion 

is easy to distinguish a char- mV^mtrtyr- 
acter in it which separates d ° m ° 
it from all mere human martyrdoms. 
Thus, it will be observed, that his 
agony, the scene in which his suffering 
j is bitterest and most evident, is, on 
human principles, wholly misplaced. 
It comes before the time, when as yet 



58 Character of Jesus. 



there is no arrest, and no human pros- 
pect that there will be any. He is at 
large, to go where he pleases, and in 
perfect outward safety. His disciples 
have just been gathered round him in 
a scene of more than family tenderness 
and affection. Indeed it is but a very 
few hours since that he was coming 
into the city, at the head of a vast 
procession, followed by loud acclama- 
tions, and attended by such honors as 
may fitly celebrate the inaugural of a 
king. Yet here, with no bad sign ap- 
parent, we see him plunged into a 
scene of deepest distress, and racked, 
in his feeling, with a more than mortal 
agony. Coming out of this, assured 
and comforted, he is shortly arrested, 
brought to trial and crucified ; where, 



Character of Jesus. 59 



if there be any thing questionable in 
his manner, it is in the fact that he is 
even more composed than some would 
have him to be, not even stooping to 
defend himself or vindicate his inno- 
cence. And when he dies, it is not as 
when the martyrs die. They die for 
what they have said, and remaining 
silent will not recant. He dies for 
what he has not said, and still is si- 
lent. 

By the misplacing of his agony thus, 
and the strange silence he observes 
when the real hour of agony 

r J His agony 

is come, we are put entirely kin pl L ce bein a g 

. n -i . . i . only a man's. 

at iault on natural princi- 
ples. But it was not for him to wait, 
as being only a man, till he is arrested, 
and the hand of death is upon him 



60 Character of Jesus. 



then to be nerved by the occasion to a 
show of victory. He that was before 
Abraham, must also be before his oc- 
casions. In a time of safety, in a cool 
hour of retirement, unaccountably to 
his friends, he falls into a dreadful 
contest and struggle of mind ; coming 
out of it finally to go through his most 
horrible tragedy of crucifixion, with 
the serenity of a spectator ! 

Why now this so great intensity 
of sorrow ? why this agony ? Was 

there not something un- 
it is, hn- i • • i t_i • 

manly speak- manly in it, something un- 

ing, excessive. 

worthy of a really great 
soul ? Take him to be only a man, 
and there probably was ; nay, if he 
were a woman, the same might be 
said. But this one thing is clear, that 



Character of Jesus. 



61 



no one of mankind, whether man 
or woman, ever had the sensibility to 
suffer so intensely ; even showing the 
body, for the mere struggle and pain 
of the mind, exuding and dripping 
with blood. Evidently there is some- 
thing mysterious here ; which mystery 
is vehicle to our feeling, and rightfully 
may be, of something divine. What, 
we begin to ask, should be the power 
of a superhuman sensibility ? and how 
far should the human vehicle shake 
under such a power ? How too should 
an innocent and pure spirit be exer- 
cised, when about to suffer, in his own 
person, the greatest wrong ever com- 
mitted ? 

Besides there is a vicarious spirit in 
love ; all love inserts itself vicariously 



62 



Character of Jesus. 



into the sufferings and woes and, in 
a certain sense, the sins of others, 
t , taking them on itself as a 

The patliol- ° 
ogy is divine. burden> Hqw if per . 

chance Jesus should "be divine, an em- 
bodiment of God's love in the world — 
how should he feel, and by what signs 
of feeling manifest his sensibility, when 
a fallen race are just about to do the 
damning sin that crowns their guilty 
history ; to crucify the only perfect 
being that ever came into the world ; 
to crucify even him, the messenger and 
representative to them of the love of 
God, the deliverer who has taken their 
case and cause upon him ! "Whosoever 
duly ponders these questions, will find 
that he is led away, more and more, 
from any supposition of the mere inor- 



Character of Jesus, 



63 



tality of Jesus. What he looks upon, 
lie will more and more distinctly see to 
be the pathology of a superhuman 
anguish. It stands, he will perceive, 
in no mortal key. It will be to him 
the anguish, visibly, not of any pusil- 
lanimous feeling, but of holy character 
itself; nay, of a mysteriously trans- 
cendent, or somehow divine character. 

But why did he not defend his cause 
and justify his innocence in the trial ? 
Partly because he had the 

J His defence 

wisdom to see that there aifthkt coSd 
really was and could be no 
trial, and that one who undertakes to 
plead with a mob, only mocks his own 
virtue, throwing words into the air that 
is already filled with the clamors of 
prejudice. To plead innocence in such 



(4 



Character of Jesus. 



a case, is only to make a protestation, 
such as indicates fear, and is really 
unworthy of a great and composed 
spirit. A man would have done it, 
but Jesus did not. Besides, there was 
a plea of innocence, in the manner of 
J esus, and the few very significant words 
that he dropped, that had an effect on 
the mind of Pilate, more searching 
and powerful than any formal protesta- 
tions. And the more we study the 
conduct of Jesus during the whole 
scene, the more shall we be satisfied 
that he said enough ; the more admire 
the mysterious composure, the wisdom, 
the self-possession, and the superhu- 
man patience of the sufferer. It was 
visibly the death-scene of a transcend- 
ent love. He dies not as a man, but 



Character of Jesus. 



65 



rather as some one might, who is mys- 
teriously more and higher. So thought 
aloud the hard-faced soldier — " Truly 
this was the Son of God." As if he 
had said — " I have seen men die — this 
is not a man. They call him Son of 
God — he cannot be less." Can he be 
less to us ? 



But Christ shows himself 

He nnder- 

to be a superhuman char- 
acter, not in the personal P ° 8S1 
traits only, exhibited in his life, but 
even more sublimely in the undertak- 
ings, works, and teachings, by which 
he proved his Messiahship. 

Consider then the reach of his un- 
dertaking ; which, if he was only a 
man, shows him to have been the most 



66 



Character of Jesus. 



extravagant and even wildest of all 
human enthusiasts. Contrary to every 
religious prejudice of his nation and 
even of his time, contrary to the com- 
paratively narrow and exclusive re- 
ligion of Moses itself, and to all his 
training under it, he undertakes to or- 
ganize a kingdom of God^ or kingdom 
of heaven on earth. His purpose in- 
cludes a new moral creation of the race 
— not of the Jews only and of men 
proselyted to their covenant, but of the 
whole human race. He declared thus, 
at an early date in his ministry, that 
many shall come from the east and the 
west and sit down with Abraham, and 
Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of 
God ; that the field is the world ; and 
that God so loves the world, as to give 



Character of Jesus. 67 

for it his only-begotten Son. He also 
declared that his gospel shall be pub- 
lished to all nations, and gave his 
apostles their commission to go into all 
the world, and publish his gospel to 
every creature. 

Here, then, we have the grand idea 
of his mission — it is to new-create the 
human race and restore it to 

/-nj -i • . i .. n . He assumes 

(rod, m the unity ot a spir- to set up the 

kingdom of 

itual kingdom. And upon God amon = 

© * men. 

this single fact, Eeinhard 
erects a complete argument for his ex- 
tra human character ; going into a 
formal review of all the great founders 
of states and most celebrated law- 
givers, the great heroes and defenders 
of nations, all the wise kings and 
statesmen, all the philosophers, all the 



Character of Jtsus. 



prophet founders of religions, and dis- 
covering as a fact that no such thought 
as this, or nearly proximate to this, had 
ever before been taken up by any living 
character in history ; showing also how 
it had happened to every other great 
character, however liberalized by cul- 
ture, to be limited in some way to the in- 
terest of his own people, or empire, and 
set in opposition, or antagonism, more 
or less decidedly, to the rest of the 
world. But to Jesus alone, the simple 
Galilean carpenter, it happens other- 
wise ; that, never having seen a map 
of the world in his whole life, or heard 
the name of half the great nations on 
it, he undertakes, coming out of his 
shop, a scheme as much vaster and 
more difficult than that of Alexander, 



Character of Jesus. 



69 



as it proposes more and what is more 
divin2ly benevolent ! This thought of a 
universal kingdom, cemented in God — 
why, the immense Eoman empire of 
his day, constructed by so many ages 
of war and conquest, is a bauble in 
comparison, both as regards the extent 
and the cost ! And yet the rustic 
tradesman of Galilee propounds even 
this for his errand, and that in a w T ay 
of assurance, as simpb and quiet, as if 
the immense reach of his plan were, in 
fact, a matter to him of no considera- 
tion. 

Nor is this all ; there is included in 
his plan, what, to any mere 



fidence of his frailty ; it is a plan as 



man, would be vet more re- v* 
mote from the possible con- 



His plan co- 
vers ages of 
time. 



TO 



Character of Jesus. 



universal in time, as it is in the scope 
of its objects. It does not expect to be 
realized in a lifetime, or even in many 
centuries to come. He calls it under- 
standingly, his grain of mustard-seed ; 
which, however, is to grow, he declares, 
and overshadow the whole earth. But 
the courage of J esus, counting a thou- 
sand years to be only a single day, is 
equal to the run of his work. He sees 
a rock of stability, where men see only 
frailty and weakness. Peter himself, 
the impulsive and always unreliable 
Peter, turns into rock and becomes a 
great foundation, as he looks upon him. 
" On this rock," he says, " I will build 
my church, and the gates of hell shall 
not prevail against it." His expecta- 
tion, too, reaches boldly out beyond 



Character of Jesus. 



71 



his own death ; that, in fact, is to be 
the seed of his great empire — " except 
a corn of wheat fall into the ground 
and die, it abide th/ J he says, "alone." 
And if we will see with what confi- 
dence and courage he adheres to his 
plan, when the time of his death ap- 
proaches — how far. he is from giving it 
up as lost, or as an exploded vision of 
his youthful enthusiasm — we have only 
to observe his last interview with the 
two sisters of Bethany, in whose hospi- 
tality he was so often comforted. 
When the box of precious ointment is 
broken upon his head, which Judas re- 
proves as a useless expense, he discov- 
ers a sad propriety or even prophecy, 
in what the woman has done, as con- 
nected with his death, now at hand. 



72 Character of Jesus. 



But it does not touch his courage, we 
perceive, or the confidence of his plan, 
or even cast a shade on his prospect. 
" Let her alone. She hath done what 
she could. She is come aforehand to 
anoint my body to the burying. Verily 
I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel 
shall be preached throughout the whole 
world, this also that this woman hath 
done shall be told for a memorial of 
her." Such was the sublime confidence 
he had in a plan that was to run 
through all future ages, and would 
scarcely begin to show its fruit during 
his own lifetime. 

Is this great idea then, which no 
man ever before conceived, 

Such attempts 

not human. ftiQ raising of the whole 
human race to God, a plan sustained 



Character of Jesus. 13 

with such evenness of courage, and a 
confidence of the world's future so far 
transcending any human example — is 
this a human development ? Eegard 
the benevolence of it, the universality 
of it, the religious grandeur of it, as a 
work readjusting the relations of Grod 
and his government with men — the 
cost, the length of time it will cover, 
and the far-off date of its completion — 
is it in this scale that a isazarene car- 
penter, a poor uneducated villager, lays 
out his plans and graduates the con- 
fidence of his undertakings ? There 
have been great enthusiasts in the 
world, and they have shown their in- 
firmity by lunatic airs, appropriate to 
their extravagance. But it is not hu- 
man, we may safely affirm, to lay out 

{ 



74 



Character of Jesus. 



projects transcending all human ability, 
like this of Jesus, and which cannot be 
completed in many thousands of years, 
doing it in all the airs of sobriety, 
entering on the performance without 
parade, and yielding life to it firmly as 
the inaugural of its triumph. No hu- 
man creature sits quietly down to a 
perpetual project, one that proposes to 
be executed only at the end, or final 
harvest of the world. That is not hu- 
man, but divine. 



Passing now to what is more interior 
in his ministry, taken as a revelation 
of his character, we are 

He takes rank 

tS o h rders™f struck with another distinc- 
tion, viz., that he takes 
rank with the poor, and grounds all the 



Character of Jesus. 75 



immense expectations of his cause, on 
a beginning made with the lowly and 
dejected classes of the world. He was 
born to the lot of the poor. His man- 
ners, tastes, and intellectual attain- 
ments, however, visibly outgrew his 
condition, and that in such a degree 
that, if he had been a mere human 
character, he must have suffered some 
painful distaste for the kind of society 
in which he lived. The great, as we 
perceive, flocked to hear him, and 
sometimes came even by night to re- 
ceive his instructions. He saw the 
highest circles of society and influence 
open to him, if he only desired to enter 
them. And, if he was a properly hu- 
man character, what virtuous, but 
rising young man would have had a 



76 



Character of Jesus. 



thought of impropriety, in accepting 
the elevation within his reach ; con- 
sidering it as the proper reward of his 
industry and the merit of his character 
— not to speak of the contempt for his 
humble origin, and his humble asso- 
ciates 2 which every upstart person, of 
only ordinary virtue, is so commonly 
seen to manifest. Still he adheres to 
the poor, and makes them the object 
of his ministry. And what is more 
peculiar, he visibly has a kind of inter- 
est in their society, which is wanting 
in that of the higher classes ; perceiv- 
ing, apparently, that they have a cer- 
tain aptitude for receiving right im- 
pressions, which the others have not. 
They are not the wise and prudent, 
filled with the conceit of learning and 



Character of Jesus. 11 

station, but they are the ingenuous 
babes of poverty, open to conviction, 
prepared, by their humble lot, to re- 
ceive thoughts and doctrines in ad- 
vance of their age. Therefore he loves 
the poor, and, without descending to 
their low manners, he delights to be 
identified with them. He is more as- 
siduous in their service than other 
men have been in serving the great. 
He goes about on foot, teaching them 
and healing their sick ; occupying his 
great and elevated mind, for whole 
years, with details of labor and care, 
which the nurse of no hospital had ever 
laid upon him — insanities, blind eyes, 
fevers, fluxes, leprosies and sores. His 
patients are all below his level and un- 
able to repay him, even by a breath of 



78 



Character of Jesus. 



congenial sympathy ; and nothing sup- 
ports him but the consciousness of good 
which attends his labors. 

Meantime, consider what contempt 
for the poor had hitherto prevailed 



society, or any part of society. They 
were only the conveniences and drudges 
of society ; appendages of luxury and 
state, tools of ambition, material to be 
used in the wars. No man who had 
taken up the idea of some great change 
or reform in society, no philosopher 
who had conceived the notion of build- 
ing up an ideal state or republic, ever 
thought of beginning with the poor. 
Influence was seen to reside in the 



No great so- 
cial architect 
ever saw the 
wisdom of it. 



among all the great states- 
men and philosophers of the 
world. The poor were not 



Character of Jesus. 



79 



higher classes, and the only hope of 
reaching the world, by any scheme of 
social regeneration, was to begin with 
them, and through them operate its 
results. But Christ, if we call him a 
philosopher, and, if he is only a man, 
we can call him by no higher name, 
was the poor man's philosopher; the 
first and only one that had ever ap- 
peared. Seeing the higher circles open 
to him, and tempted to imagine that, 
if he could once get footing for his 
doctrine among the influential and 
the great, he should thus secure his 
triumph more easily, he had yet no 
such thought. He laid his founda- 
tions, as it were, below all influence, 
and, as men would judge, threw him-* 
self away. 



80 Character of Jesus. 



And precisely here did he display a 
wisdom and character totally in ad- 
vance of his age. Eighteen centuries 
have passed away, and we now seem just 
beginning to understand the transcend- 
ent depth of this feature in his mission 
and his character. We appear to be 
just waking up to it as a discovery, 
that the blessing and upraising of fhe 
masses are the fundamental interest of 
society — a discovery, however, which is 
only a proof that the life of Jesus has 
at length begun to penetrate society 
and public history. It is precisely this 
which is working so many and great 
changes in our times, giving liberty 
and right to the enslaved many, seek- 
ing their education, encouraging their 
efforts by new and better hopes, pro- 



■ Character of Jesus. 81 

ducing an aversion to war, which has 
been the fatal source of their misery 
and depression, and opening, as we 
hope, a new era of comfort, light, and 
virtue in the world. It is as if some 
higher and better thought had visited 
our race — which higher thought is in 
the life of Jesus. The schools of all 
the philosophers are gone, hundreds of 
years ago, and all their visions have 
died away into thin air ; but the poor 
man's philosopher still lives, bringing 
up his poor to liberty, light, and char- 
acter, and drawing the nations on to a 
brighter and better day. 

At the same time, the more than 

human character of Jesus is displayed 

also in the fact that, identifying him- 
6 



82 



Character of Jesus. 



self thus with the poor, he is yet able 
to do it, without eliciting any feelings 
of partisanship in them. To one who 
will be at the pains to re- 
raises no par- fleet a little, nothing will 

tisan feeling. 

seem more difficult than 
this ; to become the patron of a class, 
a downtrodden and despised class, 
without rallying in them a feeling of 
intense malignity. And that for the 
reason, partly, that no patron, however 
just or magnanimous, is ever quite able 
to suppress the feelings of a partisan 
in himself. A little ambition, pricked 
on by a little abuse, a faint desire of 
popularity playing over the face of his 
benevolence, and tempting him to 
loosen a little of ill-nature, as tinder 
to the passions of his sect — something 



Character of Jesus. 



83 



of this kind is sure to kindle some fire 
of malignity in his clients. 

Besides, men love to be partisans. 
Even Paul and Apollos and Peter had 
their sects or schools, glorv- 

J ° " human 

ing in one against another. leadei iu tMs * 
T \Yith all their efforts, they could not 
suppress a weakness so contemptible. 
But no such feeling could ever get foot- 
ing under Christ. If his disciples had 
forbidden one to heal in the name of 
Jesus, because he followed not with 
them, he gently rebuked them, and 
made them feel that he had larger 
views than to suffer any such folly. 
As the friend of the poor and oppressed 
class, .he set himself openly against 
their enemies, and chastised them as 
oppressors, with the most terrible re- 



84 



Character of Jesus. 



bukes. He exposed the absurdity of 
their doctrine, and silenced them in 
argument ; he launched his thunder- 
bolts against their base hypocrisies ; 
but it does not appear that the popu- 
lace ever testified their pleasure, even 
by a cheer, or gave vent to any angry 
emotion under cover of his leadership. 
For there was something still, in the 
manner and air of Jesus, which made 
them feel it to be inappropriate, and 
even made it impossible. It was as if 
some being were here, taking their 
part, whom it were even an irreverence 
to applaud, much more to second by 
any partisan clamor. They would as 
soon have thought of cheering the an- 
gel in the sun, or of rallying under him 
as the head of their faction. 



Character of Jesus, 



85 



On one occasion, when he had fed 
the multitudes by a miracle, he saw 
that their national superstitions were 
excited, and that, regarding him as the 
Messiah predicted in the Scriptures, 
they were about to take him by force 
and make him their king ; but this 
was a national feeling, not the feeling 
of a class. Its root was superstition, 
not hatred. His triumphal entry into 
Jerusalem, attended by the acclama- 
tions of the multitude, if this be not 
one of the fables or myths, which our 
modern criticism rejects, is yet no 
demonstration of popular faction, or 
party animosity. Eobbing it of its 
mystical and miraculous character, as 
the inaugural of the Messiah, it has no 
real signification. In a few hours, af- 



86 



Character of Jesus. 



ter all, these hosannas are hushed, 
Jesus is alone and forsaken, and the 
very multitudes he might seem to have 
enlisted, are crying u Crucify him ! " 
On the whole, it cannot be said that 
Jesus was ever popular. He was fol- 
lowed at times, by great multitudes of 
people, whose love of the marvellous 
worked on their superstitions, to draw 
them after him. They came also to be 
cured of their diseases. They knew 
him as their friend. But there was yet 
something in him that forbade their 
low and malignant feelings gathering 
into a conflagration round him. He 
presents, indeed, an instance that 
stands alone in history, as God at the 
summit of the worlds, where a person 
has identified himself with a class, 



Character of Jesus. 



87 



without creating a faction, and with- 
out becoming a popular character. 

Consider him next as a teacher ; his 
method and manner, and the other 
characteristics of his excellence, apart 
from his doctrine. That will be dis- 
tinctly considered in another place. 

First of all, we notice the perfect 
originality and independence of his 
teaching. We have a great 

-. . . , Original and 

many men who are original, independent as 

no man is. 

in the sense of being orig;i- 
nators within a certain boundary of 
educated thought. But the originali- 
ty of Christ is uneducated. That he 
draws nothing from the stores of learn- 
ing, can be seen at a glance. The 
impression we have in reading his in- 



88 



Character of Jesus. 



structions, justifies to the letter, the 
language of his contemporaries, when 
they say, " this man hath never learn- 
ed/' There is nothing in any of his 
allusions, or forms of speech that indi- 
cates learning. Indeed, there is noth- 
ing in him that belongs to his age or 
country — no one opinion, or taste, or 
prejudice. The attempts that have 
been made, in a way of establishing his 
mere natural manhood, to show that 
he borrowed his sentiments from the 
Persians and the eastern forms of re- 
ligion, or that he had been intimate 
with the Essenes, and borrowed from 
them, or that he must have been ac- 
quainted with the schools and religions 
of Egypt, deriving his doctrine from 
them — all attempts of the kind have 



Character of Jesus. 



89 



so palpably failed, as not even to re- 
quire a deliberate answer. 

If lie is simply a man, as we hear, then 
he is most certainly a new and singular 
kind of man, never before heard of ; one 
who visibly is quite as great a miracle 
in the world as if he were not a man. 
We can see for ourselves, in the simple 
directness and freedom of his teach- 
ings, that whatever he advances is 
from himself. Shakspeare, for instance, 
whom we name as being probably the 
most creative and original spirit the 
world has ever produced, one of the 
class, too, that are called self-made 
men, is yet tinged, in all his works, 
with human learning. His glory is, 
indeed, that so much of what is great 
in history and historic character, lives 



90 Character of Jesus. 



and appears in "his dramatic creations. 
He is the high-priest, we sometimes 
hear, of human nature. But Christ, 
understanding human nature so as to 
address it more skilfully than he, de- 
rives no help from historic examples. 
He is the high-priest, rather, of the di- 
vine nature, speaking as one that has 
come out from God, and has nothing 
to borrow from the world. It is not to 
be detected, by any sign, that the hu- 
man sphere in which he moved im- 
parted any thing to him. His teach- 
ings are just as full of divine nature, 
as Shakspeare's of human. 

Neither does he teach by the human 
methods. He does not speculate about 
God, as a school professor, drawing out 
conclusions by a practice on words, and 



Character of Jesus. 91 



deeming that the way of proof ; he 
does not build up a frame of evidence 
from below, by some con- 

, i Teaches by 

StrUCtlVe prOCeSS, SUCh as no human me- 
x thod. 

the philosophers delight in ; 
but he simply speaks of Grod and spir- 
itual things as one who has come out 
from Him, to tell us what he knows. 
And his simple telling brings us the 
reality ; proves it to us in its own sub- 
lime self-evidence ; awakens even the 
consciousness of it in our own bosom ; 
so that formal arguments or dialectic 
proofs offend us by their coldness, and 
seem, in fact, to be only opaque sub- 
stances set between us and the light. 
Indeed, he makes even the world lu- 
minous by his words — fills it with an 
immediate and new sense of God, 



92 



Character of Jesus. 



which nothing has ever been able to 
expel. The incense of the upper world 
is brought out, in his garments, and 
flows abroad, as perfume, on the poi- 
soned air. 

At the same time, he never reveals 
the infirmity so commonly shown by 
human teachers, when they 
no W d<Sre b to veer a little from their point, 

gain assent. 

or turn their doctrine off bj' 
shades of variation, to catch the assent 
of multitudes. He never conforms to 
an expectation, even of his friends. 
When they look to find a great prophet 
in him, he offers nothing in the modes 
of the prophets. When they ask for 
places of distinction in his kingdom, 
he rebukes their folly, and tells them 
he has nothing to give, but a share in 



Character of Jesus. 



93 



his reproaches and his poverty. When 
they look to see him take the sword as 
the Great Messiah of their nation, 
calling the people to his standard, he 
tells them he is no warrior and no king, 
but only a messenger of love to lost 
men ; one that has come to minister 
and die, but not to set up or restore 
the kingdom. Every expectation that 
rises up to greet him, is repulsed ; and 
yet, so great is the power of his man- 
ner, that multitudes are held fast, and 
cannot yield their confidence. Envel- 
oped as he is in the darkest mystery, 
they trust him still ; going after him, 
hanging on his words, as if detained by 
some charmed influence, which they 
cannot shake off or resist. Never was 
there a teacher that so uniformly baf- 



94 Character of Jesus. 



fled every expectation of his followers, 
never one that was followed so per- 
sistently. 

Again, the singular balance of char- 
acter displayed in the teachings of 



Human opinions are formed under a 
law that seems to be universal. First, 
two opposite extremes are thrown up, 
in two opposite leaders or parties ; then 
a third party enters, trying to find 
what truth they both are endeavoring 
to vindicate, and settle thus a view of 
the subject, that includes the truth and 
clears the one-sided extremes, which 
opposing words or figures, not yet 
measured in their force, had produced. 



Comprehen- 
sive, under no 
human condi- 
tions. 



Jesus, indicates an exemp- 
tion from the standing in- 
firmity of human nature. 



Character of Jesus. 



95 



It results, in this manner, that no man, 
even the broadest in his apprehensions, 
is ever at the point of equilibrium as 
regards all subjects. Even the ripest 
of us are continually falling into some 
extreme, and losing our balance, after- 
ward to be corrected by some other 
who discovers our error, or that of our 
school. 

But Christ was of no school or party, 
and never went to any extreme — words 
could never turn him to a 

• 11 • r» . i • Could not 

one-sided view 01 any thing, hoia a one- 
sided view. 

This is the remarkable fact 
that distinguishes him from any other 
known teacher of the world. Having 
nothing to work out in a word-process, 
but every thing clear in the simple in- 
tuition of his superhuman intelligence, 



96 Character of Jesus. 



he never pushes himself to any human 
eccentricity. It does not even appear 
that he is trying, as we do, to balance 
opposites and clear extravagances, but 
he does it, as one who cannot imagine 
a one-sided view of any thing. He is 
never a radical, never a conservative. 
He will not allow his disciples to deny 
him before kings and governments, he 
will not let them renounce their allegi- 
ance to Caasar. He exposes the oppres- 
sions of the Pharisees in Moses' seat, 
but, encouraging no factious resistance, 
says — "do as they command you." 
His position as a reformer was univer- 
sal ; according to his principles almost 
nothing, whether in church or state, or 
in social life, was right, and yet he is 
thrown into no antagonism against the 



Character of Jesus. 



97 



world. How a man will do, when he 
engages only in some one reform, act- 
ing from his own human force ; the 
fuming, storming phrenzy, the holy 
rage and tragic smoke of his violence, 
how he kindles against opposition, 
grows bitter and restive because of de- 
lay, and finally comes to maturity in 
a character thoroughly detestable — all 
this we know. But Christ, with all 
the world upon his hands, and a reform 
to be carried in almost every thing, is 
yet as quiet and cordial, and as little 
in the attitude of bitterness or impa- 
tience, as if all hearts were with him, 
or the work already done ; so perfect is 
the balance of his feeling, so intuitively 
moderated is it by a wisdom not hu- 
man, 



9S Character of Jesus. 



We can not stay to sketch a full 
outline of this particular and sublime 
excellence, as it was dis- 
the cim-ent Is*- plaved in his life. It will 

perstitions. 

be seen as clearly in a single 
comparison or contrast, as in many, or 
in a more extended inquiry. Take, 
then, for an example, what may be ob- 
served in his open repugnance to all 
superstition, combined with his equal 
repugnance to what is commonly 
praised as a mode of liberality. He 
lived in a superstitious age and among 
a superstitious people. He was a per- 
son of low education, and nothing, as 
we know, clings to the uneducated 
mind with the tenacity of a supersti- 
tion. Lord Bacon, for example, a man 
certainly of the very highest intellec- 



Character of Jesus. 99 



tual training, was yet harmed by su- 
perstitions too childish to be named 
with respect, and which clung to him 
despite of all his philosophy, even to 
his death. But Christ, with no learned 
culture at all, comes forth out of Gali- 
lee, as perfectly clean of all the super- 
stitions of his time, as if he had been a 
disciple, from his childhood, of Hume 
or Strauss. " You children of super- 
stition think/' he says, " that those 
Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled 
with their sacrifices, and those eighteen 
upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, 
must have been monsters, to suffer 
such things. I tell you, nay ; but ex- 
cept ye repent, ye shall all likewise 
perish." To another company he says — 
" You imagine, in your Pharisaic and 



100 Character of Jesus. 



legal morality, that the Sabbath of 
Moses stands in the letter ; but I tell 
you that the Sabbath is made for man, 
and not man for the Sabbath ; little 
honor, therefore, do you pay to God, 
when you teach that it is not lawful to 
do good on this day. Your washings 
are a great point, you tithe herbs and 
seeds with a sanctimonious fidelity, 
would it not be as well for you teach- 
ers of the law, to have some respect to 
the weightier matters of justice, faith, 
and benevolence ? " Thus, while Soc- 
rates, one of the greatest and purest of 
human souls, a man who has attained 
to many worthy conceptions of God, 
hidden from his idolatrous country- 
men, is constrained to sacrifice a cock 
to Esculapius, the uneducated Jesus 



Character of Jesus. 101 



lives and dies superior to every super- 
stition of his time ; believing nothing 
because it is believed, respecting noth- 
ing because it is sanctified by custom 
and by human observance. Even in 
the closing scene of his life, we see his 
learned and priestly associates refusing 
to go into the judgment-hall of Caia- 
phas, lest they should be ceremonially 
defiled and disqualified for the feast ; 
though detained by no scruple at all as 
regards the instigation of a murder ! 
While he, on the other hand, pitying 
their delusions, prays for them from his 
cross— " Father, forgive them, for they 
know not what they do/' 

And yet Christ is no liberal, never 
takes the ground or boasts the distinc- 
tion of a liberal among his countrymen, 



102 Character of Jesus. 



because it is not a part of his infirmity, 
in discovering an error here, to fly to an 

excess there. His ground is 
erai£t. no llb " charity, not liberality ; and 

the two are as wide apart in 
their practical implications, as adher- 
ing to all truth, and being loose in all. 
Charity holds fast the minutest atoms 
of truth, as being precious and divine, 
offended by even so much as a thought 
of laxity. Liberality loosens the terms 
of truth ; permitting easily and with 
careless magnanimity variations from 
it ; consenting, as it were, in its own 
sovereignty, to overlook or allow them ; 
and subsiding thus, ere long, into a 
licentious indifference to all truth, and 
a general defect of responsibility in re- 
gard to it. Charity extends allowance 



Character of Jesus. 103 



to men ; liberality, to falsities them- 
selves. Charity takes the truth to be 
sacred and immovable ; liberality al- 
lows it to be marred and maimed at 
pleasure. How different the manner 
of Jesus in this respect from that un- 
reverent, feeble laxity, that lets the 
errors be as good as the truths, and 
takes it for a sign of intellectual emi- 
nence, that one can be floated com- 
fortably in the abysses of liberalism. 
"Judge not/' he says, in holy charity, 
" that ye be not judged ; " and again, 
in holy exactness, " whosoever shall 
break, or teach to break, one of these 
least commandments, shall be least in 
J the kingdom of God" — in the same 
way, " he that is not with us, is against 
us ; " and again, " he that is not against 



104 Character of Jesus. 



us, is for us " — in the same way also, 
e ye tithe mint, anise, and cummin ; > 
and again, " these things ought ye to 
have done, and not to leave the other 
undone " — once more, too, in the same 
way, u he that is without sin, let him 
cast the first stone ; " and again, " go, 
and sin no more." So magnificent and 
sublime, so plainly divine, is the bal- 
ance of Jesus. Nothing throws him 
off the center on which truth rests ; no 
prejudice, no opposition, no attempt to 
right a mistake, or rectify a delusion, 
or reform a practice. If this be hu- 
man, I do not know, for one, what it is 
to be human. 

Again, it is a remarkable and even 
superhuman distinction of J esus, that, 
while he is advancing doctrines so far 



Character of Jesus. 105 



transcending all deductions of philoso- 
phy, and opening mysteries that defy 
all human powers of expli- His simplici . 
cation, he is yet able to set ty 1S perfect 
his teachings in a form of simplicity, 
that accommodates all classes of minds. 
And this, for the reason that he speaks 
directly to men's convictions them- 
selves, without and apart from any 
learned and curious elaboration, such 
as the uncultivated can not follow. 
No one of the great writers of antiquity 
had even propounded, as yet, a doc- 
trine of virtue which the multitude 
could understand. It was taught as 
being to koXov [the fair], or to irpeirov 
[the becoming], or something of that 
nature, as distant from all their appre- 
hensions, and as destitute of motive 



106 Character of Jesus, 



power, as if it were a doctrine of min- 
eralogy. Considered as a gift to the 
world at large, it was the gift of a 
stone, not of bread. But Jesus tells 
them directly, in a manner level to 
their understanding, what they want, 
what they must do and be, to inherit 
eternal life, and their inmost convic- 
tions answer to his words. Besides, 
hi$ doctrine is not so much a doctrine 
as a biography, a personal power, a 
truth all motivity, a love walking the 
earth in the proximity of a mortal fel- 
lowship. He only speaks what goes 
forth as a feeling and a power in his 
life, breathing into all hearts. To be 
capable of his doctrine, only requires 
that the hearer be a human creature, 
wanting to know the truth. 



Character of Jesus, 107 



Call hi to, then, who will, a man, a 
human teacher ; what human teacher 
ever came down thus upon Shinin(? as 
the soul of the race, as a purellght 
beam of light from the skies — pure 
light, shining directly into the visual 
orb of the mind, a light for all that 
live, a full transparent day, in which 
truth bathes the spirit as an element. 
Others talk and speculate about truth, 
and those who can may follow ; but 
J esus is the truth, and lives it, and if 
he is a mere human teacher, he is the 
first who was ever able to find a form 
for truth, at all adequate to the world's 
uses. And yet the truths he teaches 
outreach all the doctrines of all the 
philosophers of the world. He excels 
them a hundred fold more, in the scope 



108 Character of Jesus. 



and grandeur of his doctrine, than he 
does in his simplicity itself. 

Is this human, or is it plainly di- 
vine ? If you will see what is human, 



tie and accomplished Celsus, the great 
adversary of Christianity in its original 
promulgation, alleges for one of his 
principal arguments against it. " Wool- 
len manufacturers," he says, " shoe- 
makers and curriers, the most unedu- 
cated and boorish of men are zealous 
advocates of this religion ; men who 
cannot open their mouths before the 
learned, and who only try to gain over 
the women and children in families." * 

* Xeander's Memorials of Christian Life, p. 19. 



Adequately 
teaches God 
even to the 
humble. 



or what the wisdom of hu- 
manity would ordain, it is 
this — exactly what the sub- 



Character of Jesus. 109 



And again, what is only the same ob- 
jection, under a different form, assum- 
ing that religion, like a philosophy, 
must be for the learned^ he says, " He 
must be void of understanding who can 
believe that Greeks and barbarians, in 
Asia, Europe, and Lybia — all nations 
to the ends of the earth — can unite in 
one and the same religious doctrine." * 
So also, Plato says, " it is not easy to 
find the Father and Creator of all ex- 
istence, and when he is found it is im- 
possible to make him known to all." f 
" But exactly this," says Justin Mar- 
tyr, " is what our Christ has effected 
by his power." And Tertullian, also, 
glorying in the simplicity of the gospel, 



* Neander's Memorials of Christian Life. p. 33. 
t Timseus. 



110 



Character of Jesus. 



as already proved to be a truly divine 
excellence, says. "Every Christian arti- 
san lias found God, and points him out 
to thee, and in fact, shows thee every 
thing which is sought for in God, al- 
though Plato maintains that the Cre- 
ator of the world is not easily found, 
and that, when he is found, he cannot 
be made known to all." * Here, then, 
we have Christ against Celsus, and 
Christ against Plato. These agree in 
assuming that we have a God, whom 
only the great can mount high enough 
in argument to know. Christ reveals a 
God whom the humblest artisan can 
teach, and all mankind embrace, with 
a faith that unifies them all. 

Again, the morality of Jesus has a 

* Xeander's Memorials of Christian Life, p. 19. 



Character of Jesus. Ill 



practical superiority to that of all hu- 
man teachers, in the fact that it is not 
an artistic, or theoretically 

, , l This morali- 

elaborated scheme, but one ty is not ar- 
tistic. 

that is propounded in pre- 
cepts that carry their own evidence, 
and are, in fact, great spiritual laws 
ordained by God, in the throne of re- 
ligion. He did not draw long argu- 
ments to settle what the summum bo- 
num is, and then produce a scheme of 
ethics to correspond. He did not go 
into the vexed question, what is the 
foundation of virtue ? and hang a sys- 
tem upon his answer. Nothing falls 
into an artistic shape, as when Plato 
or Socrates asked what kind of action 
is beautiful action ? reducing the prin- 
ciples of morality to a form as dif- 



112 Character of Jesus. 

ficult for the uncultivated, as the art 
of sculpture itself. Yet Christ excels 
them all in the beauty of his precepts, 
without once appearing to consider 
their beauty. He simply comes forth 
telling us, from God, what to do, with- 
out deducing any thing in a critical 
way ; and yet, while nothing has ever 
yet been settled by the critics and the- 
orizing philosophers, that could stand 
fast and compel the assent of the race, 
even for a year, the morality of Christ 
is about as firmly seated in the convic- 
tions of men, as the law of gravity in 
their bodies. 

He comes into the world full of all 
moral beauty, as God of physical ; and 
as God was not obliged to set himself 
to a course of aesthetic study, when he 



Character of Jesus. 113 



created the forms and landscapes of 
the world, so Christ comes to his rules, 
by no critical practice in 

, TT y • ,. But intui- 

WOrdS. lie Opens hlS lipS, tive and orig- 
inal. 

and the creative glory of his 
mind pours itself forth in living pre- 
cepts — Do to others as ye would that 
others should do to you — Blessed are 
the peacemakers — Smitten upon one 
cheek, turn the other — Besist not evil 
— Forgive your enemies — Do good to 
them that hate you — Lend not, hoping 
to receive — Eeceive the truth as little 
children. Omitting all the deep spir- 
itual doctrines he taught, and taking 
all the human teachers on their own 
ground, the ground of preceptive mo- 
rality, they are seen at once to be 
meager and cold ; little artistic in- 

8 



114 Character of Jesus. 

ventions, gleams of high conceptions 
caught by study, having about the 
same relation to the Christian morality 
that a statue has to the flexibility, the 
self-active force, and flushing warmth 
of man, as he goes forth in the image 
of his Creator, to be the reflection of 
His beauty and the living instrument 
of his will. Indeed, it is the very dis- 
tinction of Jesus that he teaches, not 
a verbal, but an original, vital, and 
divine morality. He does not dress up 
a moral picture and ask you to observe 
its beauty, he only tells you how to 
live ; and the most beautiful charac- 
ters the world has ever seen, have been 
those who received and lived his pre- 
cepts without once conceiving their 
beauty. 



Character of Jesus. 



115 



Once more, it is a high distinction 
of Christ's character, as seen in his 
teachings, that he is never 

n p, Never anx- 

anxious tor the success ot ious for suc- 
cess, 

his doctrine. Fully con- 
scious of the fact that the world is 
against him, scoffed at, despised, hated, 
alone too, in his cause, and without 
partisans that have any public influ- 
ence, no man has ever been able to de- 
tect in him the least anxiety for the 
final success of his doctrine. He is 
never jealous of contradiction. When 
his friends display their dulness and 
incapacity, or even when they forsake 
him, he is never ruffled or disturbed. 
He rests on his words, with a compo- 
sure as majestic as if he were sitting 
on the circle of the heavens. Now the 



116 Character of Jesus. 

consciousness of truth, we are not about 
to deny, has an efiect of this nature in 
every truly great mind. But when has 
it had an effect so complete ? What 
human teacher, what great philosopher, 
has not shown some traces of anxiety 
for his school, that indicated his weak- 
ness ; some pride in his friends, some 
dislike of his enemies, some traces of 
wounded ambition, when disputed or 
denied ? But here is a lone man, a 
humble, uneducated man, never schooled 
into the elegant fiction of an assumed 
composure, or practised in the conven- 
tional dignities of manners, and yet, 
finding all the world against him, the 
world does not rest on its axle more 
firmly than he upon his doctrine. 
Questioned by Pilate what he means 



Character of Jesus. 117 



by truth, it is enough to answer — " He 
that is of the truth heareth my voice." 
If this be human, no other man of the 
race, we are sure, has ever dignified 
humanity by a like example. 

Such is Christ as a teacher. When 
has the world seen a phenomenon like 
this ; a lonely uninstructed youth, com- 
ing forth amid the moral darkness of 
Galilee, even more distinct from his 
age, and from every thing around him, 
than a Plato would be rising up alone 
in some wild tribe in Oregon, assuming 
thus a position at the head of the world, 
and maintaining it, for eighteen centu- 
ries, by the pure self-evidence of his 
life and doctrine ! Does he this by the 
force of mere human talent or genius ? 
If so, it is time that we begin to look 



118 Character of Jesus. 



to genius for miracles ; for there is 
really no greater miracle. 

There is yet one other and more in- 
clusive distinction of the character of 
Jesus, which must not be 
made sacred omitted, and which sets him 

by familiarity. 

off more widely from all the 
mere men of the race, just because it 
raises a contrast which is, at once, total 
and experimental. Human characters 
are always reduced in their eminence, 
and the impressions of awe they have 
raised, by a closer and more complete 
acquaintance. Weakness and blemish 
are discovered by familiarity ; admira- 
tion lets in qualifiers ; on approach, 
the halo dims a little, But it was not 
so with Christ. With his disciples, in 



Character of Jesus. 119 



closest terms of intercourse, for three 
whole years ; their brother, friend, 
teacher, monitor, guest, fellow-travel- 
er ; seen by them under all the con- 
ditions of public ministry, and private 
society, where the ambition of show, 
or the pride of power, or the ill-nature 
provoked by annoyance, or the vanity 
drawn out by confidence, would most 
certainly be reducing him to the criti- 
cism even of persons most unsophisti- 
cated, he is yet visibly raising their sense 
of his degree and quality ; becoming a 
greater wonder and holier mystery, and 
gathering to his person feelings of rev- 
erence and awe, at once more general 
and more sacred. Familiarity operates 
a kind of apotheosis, and the man be- 
comes divinity, in simply being known. 



120 Character of Jesus. 



At first, lie is the Son of Mary and 
the Nazarene carpenter. Next, he is 
heard speaking with authority, as con- 
trasted even with the Scribes. Next, 
he is conceived by some to be certainly 
Elias, or some one of the prophets, re- 
turned in power to the world. Peter 
takes him up, at that point, as being 
certainly the Christ, the great mysteri- 
ous Messiah ; only not so great that he 
is not able to reprove him, when he be- 
gins to talk of being ki)led by his ene- 
mies ; protesting c: be it far from thee, 
Lord." But the next we see of the 
once bold apostle, he is beckoning to 
another, at the table, to whisper the 
Lord and ask who it is that is going 
to betray him ; unable himself to so 
much as invade the sacred ear of his 



Character of Jesus. 121 



Master with the audible and open 
question. Then, shortly after, when 
he comes out of the hall of Caiaphas, 
flushed and flurried with his threefold 
lie, and his base hypocrisy of cursing, 
what do we see but that, simply catch- 
ing the great Master's eye, his heart 
breaks down, riven with insupportable 
anguish, and is utterly dissolved in 
childish tears. And so it will be dis- 
covered in all the disciples, that Christ 
is more separated from them, and holds 
them in deeper awe, the closer he 
comes to them and the more perfectly 
they know him. 

The same, too, is true of his ene- 
mies. At first, they look on him only 
as some new fanatic, that has come to 
turn the heads of the people. Next, 



122 Character of Jesus. 



they want to know whence he drew his 
opinions, and his singular accomplish- 
ments in the matter of public address ; 
not being, as all that knew him testify, 
an educated man. Next, they send 
out a company to arrest him, and, 
when they hear him speak, they are so 
deeply impressed that they dare not do 
it, but go back, under a kind of invin- 
cible awe, testifying — " never man 
spake like this man." Afterward, t:> 
break some fancied spell there may be 
in him, they hire one of his own friends 
to betray him ; and even then, when 
they come directly before him and hear 
him speak, they are ir such tremor of 
apprehension, lest he should suddenly 
annihilate them, that they reel incon- 
tinently backward and are pitched on 



Character of Jesus. 123 



the ground. Pilate trembles visibly 
before him, and the more because of 
his silence and his wonderful submis- 
sion. And then, when the fatal deed 
is done, what do we see but that the 
multitude, awed by some dread mys- 
tery in the person of the crucified, re- 
turn home smiting on their breasts for 
anguish, in the sense of what their in- 
fatuated and guilty rage has done. 

The most conspicuous matter, there* 
fore, in the history of Jesus, is, that 
what holds true, in all our 

p . . Our experi- 

expenence Ol men, IS m- ence of men re- 
versed in him. 

verted in him. He grows 
sacred, peculiar, wonderful, divine, as 
acquaintance reveals him. At first he 
is only a man, as the senses report him 
to be ; knowledge, observation, famil- 



124 Character of Jesus. 

iarity, raise him into the God-man. 
He grows pure and perfect, more than 
mortal in wisdom, a being enveloped 
in sacred mystery, a friend to be loved 
in awe — dies into awe, and a sorrow 
that contains the element of worship ! 
And exactly this appears in the his- 
tory, without any token of art, or even 
apparent consciousness that it does 
appear — appears because it is true. 
Probably no one of the evangelists ever 
so much as noticed this remarkable in- 
version of what holds good respecting 
men, in the life and character of Jesus. 
Is this character human, or is it plainly 
divine ? 

We have now sketched some of the 
principal distinctions of the super- 



Character of Jesus. 125 



human character of Jesus. We have 
seen him. unfolding as a flower^ from 
the geroi of a perfect youth : 

° r J 7 Recapitula- 

growing up to enter into tKm * 
great scenes and have his part in great 
trials ; harmonious in all with himself 
and truth, a miracle of celestial beauty. 
He is a Lamb in innocence, a God in 
dignity ; revealing an impenitent but 
faultless piety, such as no mortal ever 
attempted, such as, to the highest of 
mortals, is inherently impossible. He 
advances the most extravagant preten- 
sions, without any show of conceit, or 
even seeming fault of modesty. He 
suffers without affectation of compo- 
sure and without restraint of pride ; 
suffers as no mortal sensibility can, and 
where, to mortal view, there was no 



126 Character of Jesus. 



reason for pain at all ; giving us not 
only an example of gentleness and pa- 
tience in all the small trials of life, but 
revealing the depths even of the pas- 
sive virtues of God, in his agony and 
the patience of his suffering love. He 
undertakes also a plan, universal in ex- 
tent, perpetual in time ; viz., to unite 
all nations in a kingdom of righteous- 
ness under God ; laying his founda- 
tions in the hearts of the poor, as no 
great teacher had ever done before, and 
yet without creating ever a faction, or 
stirring one partisan feeling in his fol- 
lowers. In his teachings he is perfectly 
original, distinct from his age and from 
all ages ; never warped by the expecta- 
tion of his friends ; always in a balance 
of truth, swayed by no excesses, run- 



Character of Jesus. 12 7 



ning to no oppositions or extremes ; 
clear of all superstition, and equally 
clear of all liberalism ; presenting the 
highest doctrines in the lowest and 
simplest forms ; establishing a pure, 
universal morality, never before estab- 
lished ; and, with all his intense devo- 
tion to the truth, never anxious, per- 
ceptibly, for the success of his doctrine. 
Finally, to sum up all in one, he grows 
more great and wise, and sacred, the 
more he is known — needs, in fact, to 
be known, to have his perfection seen. 
And this, we say, is J esus, the Christ ; 
manifestly not human, not of our world 
— some being who has burst into it, and 
is not of it. Call him for the present, 
that " Holy Thing/' and say, " by this 
i we believe that thou earnest from God/' 



128 Character of Jesus. 



Not to say that we are dissatisfied 
with, this sketch, would be almost an 
irreverence of itself, to the subject of 
it. Who can satisfy himself with any 
thing that he can say of J esus Christ ? 
We have seen, how many pictures of 
the sacred person of Jesus, by the first 
masters ; but not one, among them all, 
that did not rebuke the weakness which 
could dare attempt an impossible sub- 
ject. So of the character of Jesus. 
It is necessary, for the holy interest of 
truth, that we should explore it, as we 
are best able ; but what are human 
thoughts and human conceptions, on a 
subject that dwarfs all thought and 
immediately outgrows whatever is con- 
ceived. And yet, for the reason that 
we have failed, we seem also to have 



Character of Jesus. 129 



succeeded. For the more impossible it 
" is found to be, to grasp the character 
and set it forth, the more clearly it is 
seen to be above our range — a miracle 
and a mystery. 



Two questions now remain, w T hich 
our argument requires to be answered. 
And the first is this — did 

i -I . ,,~ . Did such a 

any such character, as this being actually 

exist ? 

" we have been tracing, actu- 
ally exist ? Admitting that the char- 
acter, whether it be fact or fiction, is 
such as we have seen it to be, two sup- 
positions are open ; either that such a 
character actually lived, and was pos- 
sible to be described, because it fur- 
nished the matter of the picture, itself ; 
or else, that Jesus, being a merely hu- 

9 



130 Character of Jesus. 



man character as he lived, was adorned 
to set off in this manner, by the ex- 
aggerations of fancy, and fable, and 
wild tradition afterward. In the for- 
mer alternative, we have the insupera- 
ble difficulty of believing, that any so 
perfect and glorious character was ever 
attained to by a mortal. If Christ was 
a merely natural man. then was he 
under all the conditions privative, as 
regards the security of his virtue, that 
we have discovered in man. He was a 
new-created being, as such to be per- 
fected in a character of steadfast holi- 
ness, only by the experiment of evil 
and redemption from it. We can be- 
lieve any miracle, therefore, more easily 
than that Christ was a man, and yet a 
perfect character, such as here is given. 



Character of Jesus. 131 



In the latter alternative, we have four 
different writers, widely distinguished 
in their style and mental habit — infe- 
rior persons, all, as regards their ac- 

• complishnients, and none of them re- 
markable for gifts of genius — contrib- 
uting their parts, and coalescing thus 

\ in the representation of a character 
: perfectly harmonious with itself, and, 
\ withal, a character whose ideal no poet 
' had been able to create, no philoso- 
: pher, by the profoundest effort of 
thought, to conceive and set forth to 
the world. What is more, these four 
writers are, by the supposition, chil- 

* clren all of credulity, retailing the ab- 
1 surd gossip and the fabulous stories of 

an age of marvels, and yet, by some 
I accident, they are found to have con- 



132 Character of Jesus. 



ceived and sketched the only perfect 
character known to mankind. To be- 
lieve this, requires a more credulous 
age than these writers ever saw. We 
fall back, then, upon our conclusion, 
and there we rest. Such was the real 
historic character of Jesus. Thus he 
lived ; the character is possible to be 
conceived, because it was actualized 
in a living example. The only solu- 
tion is that which is given by J esus 
himself, when he says — " I came forth 
from the Father, and am come into 
the world/' 

The second question is this ; whether 
this character is to be conceived as an 
actually existing sinless character in 
the world? That it is I maintain, be- 
cause the character can no otherwise 



Character of Jesus. 133 



be accounted for in its known excel- 
lences. How was it that a simple- 
minded peasant of Galilee, 

! was able to put himself m sinless charac- 
ter? 

advance, in this manner, of 
all human teaching and excellence ; 
unfolding a character so peculiar in 
its combinations, and so plainly impos- 
; sible to any mere man of the race ? 
• Because his soul was filled with inter- 
I nal beauty and purity, having no spot, 
, or stain, distorted by no obliquity of 
view or feeling, lapsing, therefore, into 
no eccentricity or deformity. We can 
j make out no account of him so easy to 
| believe, as that he was sinless ; indeed, 
} we can make no other account of him 
•: at all. He realized what are, humanly 
, speaking, impossibilities ; for his soul 



134 Character of Jesus. 



was warped and weakened by no hu- 
man infirmities, doing all in a way of 
ease and naturalness, just because it is 
easy for clear waters to flow from a 
pure spring. To believe that Jesus 
got up these high conceptions artisti- 
cally, and then acted them, in spite of 
the conscious disturbance of his inter- 
nal harmony, and the conscious cloud- 
ing of his internal purity by sin, would 
involve a degree of credulity and a 
want of perception, as regards the laws 
of the soul and their necessary action 
under sin, so lamentable as to be a prop- 
er subject of pity. We could sooner be- 
lieve all the fables of the Talmud. 

Besides, if Jesus was a sinner, he 
was conscious of sin as all sinners are, 
and, therefore, was a hypocrite in the 



Character of Jesus. 135 



whole fabric of his character ; realizing 
so much of divine beauty in it, main- 
taining the show of such unfaltering 
harmony and celestial grace, and doing 
all this with a mind confused and 
fouled by the affectations acted for true 
virtues ! Such an example of success- 
ful hypocrisy would be itself the great- 
est miracle ever heard of in the world. 

Furthermore, if Jesus was a sinner, 
then he was, of course, a fallen being ; 
down under the bondage, distorted by 
the perversity of sin and its desolating 
effects, as men are. The root, there- 
fore, of all his beauty is guilt. Evil 
has broken loose in him, he is held 
fast under evil. Bad thoughts are 
streaming through his soul in bad suc- 
cessions ; his tempers have lost their 



136 



Character of Jesus. 



tune ; his affections have been touched 
by leprosy ; remorse scowls upon his 
heart ; his views have lost their balance 
and contracted obliquity ; in a word, 
he is fallen. Is it then such a being, 
one who has been touched, in this 
manner, by the demon spell of evil — is 
it he that is unfolding such a charac- 
ter ? 

What, then, do our critics in the 
school of naturalism say of this char- 
Mr. Park- acter of Christ ? Of course 

er's estimate 

of him. they are obliged to say many 
handsome and almost saintly things of 
it. Mr. Parker says of him, that u He 
unites in himself the sublimest pre- 
cepts and divinest practices, thus more 
than realizing the dream of prophets 
and sages ; rises free from all preju- 



Character of Jesus. 



137 



dice of his age, nation, or sect ; gives 
free range to the Spirit of God, in his 
breast ; sets aside the law, sacred and 
true — honored as it was, its forms, its 
sacrifice, its temple, its priests ; puts 
away the doctors of the law, subtle, 
irrefragable, and pours out a doctrine 
beautiful as the light, sublime as 
Heaven, and true as God." * Again — 
as if to challenge for his doctrine, the 
distinction of a really supernatural ex^ 
cellence — u Try him as we try other 
teachers. They deliver their word, 
find a few waiting for the consolation 
who accept the new tidings, follow the 
new method, and soon go beyond their 
teacher, though less mighty minds than 
he. Though humble men, we see what 

* Discourses of Religion, p. 294 



138 Character of Jesus. 



Socrates and Luther never saw. But 
eighteen centuries have passed since 
the Sun of humanity rose so high in 
Jesus ; what man, what sect has mas- 
tered his thought, comprehended his 
method, and so fully applied it to 
life." * 

Mr. Hennel, who writes in a colder 
mood, but has, on the whole, produced 
„ „ „ the ablest of all the argu- 

Mr. Hennel s ° 
estimate. mentg yefc offere( J Qn fl^ 

side, speaks more cautiously. He says, 
" Whilst no human character, in the 
history of the world, can be brought to 
mind, which, in proportion as it could 
be closely examined, did not present 
some defects, disqualifying it for being 
the emblem of moral perfection, we can 

* Discourses of Eeligion, p. 303. 



Character of Jesus. 139 



rest, with least check or sense of incon- 
gruity, on the imperfectly known char- 
acter of Jesus of Nazareth/' * 

But the intimation here is, that the 
character is not perfect ; it is only one 
in which the sense of perfec- „ , 

1 Faults 

tion suffers "least check" charge(L 
And where is the fault charged? 
Why, it is discovered that Jesus 
cursed a fig-tree, in which he is seen 
to be both angry and unreasonable. 
He denounced the Pharisees in terms 
of bitter animosity. He also drove 
the money changers out of the temple 
with a scourge of rods, in which he is 
even betrayed into an act of physical 
violence. These and such like specks 
of fault are discovered, as they think, 

* Inquiry, p. 451. 



140 Character of Jesus. 



in the life of Jesus. So graceless in 
our conceit, have we of this age grown, 
that we can think it a point of scholar- 
ly dignity and reason, to spot the only 
perfect beauty that has ever graced 
our world, with such discovered blem- 
ishes as these ! As if sin could ever 
need to be made out against a real 
sinner, in this small way of special 
pleading ; or as if it were ever the way 
of sin to err in single particles or 
homoeopathic quantities of wrong ! A 
more just sensibility would denounce 
this malignant style of criticism, as a 
heartless and really low-minded pleas- 
ure in letting down the honors of 
goodness. 

In justice to Mr. Parker, it must be 
admitted that he does not actually - 



Character of Jesus. 141 

[ charge these points of history as faults, 
or blemishes in the character of J esus. 
And yet, in justice also, it 

.. 111 i i i Faults sup- 

rQUSt be added that lie does posed and in- 
timated. 

' compose a section under the 
• heading — " The Negative Side, or the 
1 Limitations of Jesus" — where these, 
I with other like matters, are thrown in 
f by insinuation, as possible charges 
: sometimes advanced by others. For 
1 himself, he alleges nothing positive, 
' but that Jesus was under the popular 
delusion of his time, in respect to devils 
j or demoniacal possessions, and that he 
was mistaken in some of his references 
to the Old Testament. What, now, is 
to be thought of such material, brought 
forward under such a heading, to flaw 
: such a character ! Is it sure that 



142 



Character of Jesus. 



Christ was mistaken in his belief of the 
foul spirits ? Is it certain that a suf- 
ficient mode of interpretation will not 
clear his references of mistake ? And 
so, when it is suggested, at second 
hand, that his invective is too fierce 
against the Pharisees, is there no 
escape, but to acknowledge that, " con- 
sidering his youth, it was a venial er- 
ror ? " Or, if there be no charge but 
this, "at all affecting the moral and 
religious character of Jesus/' should 
not a just reverence to one whose life is ! 
so nearly faultless, constrain us to look 
for some more favorable construction, 
that takes the solitary blemish away ? 
Is it true that invective is a necessary 
token of ill-nature ? Are there no 
occasions where even holiness will be i 



Character of Jesus. 



143 



i most forward in it ? And when a sin- 
■ gle man stands out alone, facing a whole 
: living order and caste, that rule the 
time — oppressors of the poor, hypocrites 
and pretenders in religion, corrupters 

- of all truth and faith, under the names 
of learning and religion — is the male- 

- diction, the woe, that he hurls against 

- them, to be taken as a fault of violence 
and unregulated passion ; or consider- 
ing what amount of force and public 
influence he dares to confront and set 
in deadly enmity against his person, is 

! he rather to be accepted as God's 
i champion, in the honors of a great and 

genuinely heroic spirit ? 

Considering how fond the world is 
; of invective, how ready to admire the 

rhetoric of sharp words, how many 



144 



Character of Jesus. 



speakers study to excel in the fine art 
of excoriation, haw many reformers are 
applauded in vehement at- 

His invec- m 

tive against tacks on character, and win 

the Pharisees. J 

a great repute of fearless- 
ness, just because of their severity, 
when, in fact, there is nothing to fear 
— when possibly the subject is a dead 
man. not yet buried — it is really a 
most striking tribute to the more thai: 
human character of Jesus, that we 
are found to be so apprehensive re- 
specting him in particular, lest his 
plain, unstudied, unrhetorical severities 
on this or that occasion, may imply 
some possible defect, or " venial error/' 
in him. Why this special sensibility 
to fault in him ? save that, by his beau- 
tiful and perfect life, he has raised our 



Character of Jesus. 



145 



\ conceptions so high as to make, what 
we might applaud in a man, a possible 

. blemish in his divine excellence ? 

The glorious old reformer and blind 
poet of Puritanism — vindicator of a 
free commonwealth and a 

Milton s right 

free, unprelatical religion— of invectiv - 
holds, in our view, a far worthier and 
manlier conception of Christ's deal- 
ing with the Pharisees, and of what is 
due to all the usurpations of titled 
conceit and oppression in the world. 
With truly refreshing vehemence, he 
writes — " For in times of opposition, 
| when against new heresies arising, or 
old corruptions to be reformed, this 
cool, impassionate mildness of positive 
wisdom, is not enough to damp and 
astonish the proud resistance of carnal 

I 



146 Character of Jesus. 



and false doctors, then (that I may 
have leave to soar awhile, as the poets 
use,) Zeal, whose substance is ethereal, 
arming in complete diamond, ascends 
his fiery chariot, drawn by two blazing 
meteors figured like beasts, but of a 
higher breed than any the zodiac yields, 
resembling those four which Ezekiel 
and St. John saw — the one visaged like 
a lion, to express power, high authority 
and indignation, the other of man, to 
cast derision and scorn upon perverse 
and fraudulent seducers — with them 
the invincible warrior, Zeal, shaking 
loosely the slack reins, drives over the 
heads of scarlet prelates and such as 
are insolent to maintain traditions, 
bruising their stiff necks under his 
flaming wheels. Thus did the true 



Character of Jesus. 147 



prophets of old combat with the false ; 
thus Christ, himself the fountain of 
meekness, found acrimony enough to 
be still galling and vexing the prelati- 
cal Pharisees. But ye will say, these 
had immediate warrant from God to 
be thus bitter ; and I say, so much the 
plainer is it found that there may be a 
sanctified bitterness against the ene- 
mies of the truth." * 

Probably Christ himself had no 
other account to give of his conduct, 
on the occasion referred to ; and no 

i! 

other was needed, than that he felt a 
zeal within him (answering to Milton's 

3 

picture), which could not, must not be 
repressed. His disciples felt his ter- 
rible severity, and were going to be 

* Apology for Smectymnus, Sect. I. 



148 Character of Jesus. 



shocked by it, but they remembered 
the Scripture — " The zeal of thy house 
hath eaten me up/' After all, it was, 
when rightly viewed, the necessary 
outburst, only, of that indignant fire, 
which is kindled in the sweet bosom 
of innocence, by the insolence of hy- 
pocrisy and oppression. 

I conclude, then, (1.) that Christ 
actually lived, and bore the real char- 
acter ascribed to him in the history. 
And (2.) that he was a sinless charac- 
ter. How far off is he now from any 
possible classification in the genus hu- 
manity ! 

Here, then, is a being who has broken 
into the world, and is not of it ; one 
who has come out from God, and is even 



Character of Jesus. 149 



an expression to us of the complete 
beauty of God — such as he should be, 
if he actually was, what he 
is affirmed to be. the Eternal Ms e mirLies 

implied. 

Word of the Father incar- 
nate. Did he work miracles ? This 
now is the question that waits for our 
decision — did he work miracles ? By 
i the supposition, he is superhuman. 
By the supposition, too, he is in the 
world as a miracle. Agreeing that the 
laws of nature will not be suspended, 
any more than they are by our own 
supernatural action, will they yet be so 
subordinated to his power, as to permit 
the performance of signs and wonders, 
in which we may recognize a superhu- 
man force? Since he is shown to be a 
superhuman being, manifestly nature 



150 Character of Jesus. 



will have a relation to him, under and 
by her own laws, such as accords with 
his superhuman quality, and it will be 
very singular if he does not do super- 
human things ; nay, it is even philo- 
sophically incredible that he should 
not, and that without any breach upon 
the integrity of nature. Thus an or- 
gan is a certain instrument, curiously 
framed or adjusted in its parts, and 
prepared to yield itself to any force 
which touches the keys. An animal 
runs back and forth across the key- 
board, and produces a jarring, disagree- 
able jumble of sounds. Thereupon he 
begins to reason, and convinces himself 
that it is in the nature of the instru- 
ment to make such sounds, and no 
other. But a skilful player comes to 



Character of Jesus. 151 



the instrument, as a higher presence, 
endowed with a super- animal sense and 
skill. He strikes the keys, and all- 
melodious and heavenly sounds roll out 
upon the enchanted air. Will the 
animal now go on to reason that this is 
impossible, incredible, because it vio- 
lates the nature of the instrument, 
and is contrary to his own experience ? 
Perhaps he may, and men may some- 
times not be wiser than he. But the 
player himself, and all that can think 
it possible for him to do what the ani- 
mal cannot, will have no doubt that the 
music is made by the same laws that 
made the jargon. Just so Christ, to 
whose will or touch the mundane sys- 
tem is pliant as to ours, may be able 
to execute results through its very 



152 Character of Jesus. 



laws subordinated to him, which to us 
are impossible. Nay, it would be itself 
a contradiction of all order and fit rela- 
tion, if he could, not. To suppose that 
a being out of humanity, will be shut 
up within all the limitations of hu- 
manity, is incredible, and contrary to 
reason. The very laws of nature them- 
selves, having him present to them, as 
a new agent and higher first term, 
would require the development of new 
consequences and incidents, in the 
nature of wonders. Being a miracle 
himself, it would be the greatest of 
all miracles if he did not work mir- 
acles. 

Let it be further noted, that Christ 
is here on an errand high enough to 
justify his appearing, and also of a na- 



Character of Jesus. 153 



ture to exclude any suspicion that he 
is going to overthrow the order of 
God's works. He declares . 

His errand is 

that he has come out from orderitself - 
God, to be a restorer of sin, a regene- 
rator of all things, a new moral creator 
of the world ; thus to do a work that 
is, at once, the hope of all order, and 
the greatest of all miracles. He tells 
us, indeed, that he is come to set up 
the kingdom of God, and fulfil the 
highest ends of the divine goodness in 
the creation of the world itself; and 
the dignity of his work, certified by the 
dignity also of his character, sets all 
things in proportion, and commends 
him to our confidence in all the won- 
ders he performs. 

Nor shall we apprehend in his mira- 



154 Character of Jesus. 



cles any disruption of law ; for we 
shall see that he is executing that true 
system, above nature and 

No disrup- , . .. . . 

tion of law or more comprehensive, which 

system. 

is itself the basis of all sta- 
bility, and contains the real import of 
all things. Dwelling from eternity in 
this higher system himself, and having 
it centred in his person, wheeling and 
subordinating thus all physical instru- 
ments, as doubtless he may, to serve 
those better ends in which all order lies, 
it will not be in us, when he comes 
forth from the Father, on the Father's 
errand, to forbid that he shall work in 
the prerogatives of the Father. Visi- 
bly not one of us, but a visitant who 
has come out from a realm of spiritual 
majesty, back of the sensuous orb on 



Character of Jesus. 



155 



which our moth-eyes dwell as in con- 
genial dimness and obscurity of light, 
what shall we think when we see dis- 
eases fly before him, and blindness let- 
ting fall the scales of obscured vision, 
and death retreating from its prey, but 
that the seeming disruption of our 
retributive state under sin, is made to 
let in mercy and order from above ? 
For, if man has buried himself in 
sense, and married all sense to sin, 
which sin is itself the soul of all disor- 
der, can it be to us a frightful thing 
that he lays his hand upon the per- 
verted causalities, and says, " thou art 
made whole ? 99 If the bad empire, 
the bitter unnature of our sin, is some- 
where touched 'by his healing power, 
must we apprehend some fatal shock 



156 



Character of Jesus, 



of disorder ? If, by his miraculous 
force, some crevice is made in the 
senses, to let in the light of heaven's 
peace and order, must we tremble lest 
the scientific laws are shaken, and the 
scientific causes violated ? Belter is it 
to say — " This beginning of miracles 
did Jesus make in Galilee, and mani- 
fested forth his glory, and we believe in 
him/' Glory breaks in through his in- 
carnate person, to chase away the dark- 
ness. In him, peace and order descend 
to rebuild the realm below, they have 
maintained above. Sin, the damned 
miracle and misery of the groaning cre- 
ation, yields to the stronger miracle of 
Jesus and his works, and the great good 
minds of this and the upper worlds be- 
hold integrity and rest returning, and 



Character of Jesus. 157 



the peace of universal empire secure. 
Out of the disorder that was, rises or- 
der ; out of chaos, beauty. Amen ! 
Alleluia ! for the Lord God omnipotent 
reigneth ! 

At the same time, it must not be 
overlooked, that the account which is 
made of the Christian mira- 
cles, by the critics who deny cai hypHtLsL 

impossible. 

them, is itself impossible. 
It is that they are myths, or legendary 
tales, that grew up out of the story- 
j telling and marvelling habit of the dis- 
ciples of Christ, within the first thirty 
years after their Master's death. They 
were developed, in other words, in the 
lifetime of the eye witnesses of Christ's 
I ministry, and recorded by eye-witnesses 
I themselves. We are also required to 



158 



Character of Jesus. 



believe that four common men are able 
to preserve such a character as that of 
Christ, while loading down the history 
thus, with so many mythical wonders 
that are the garb of their very gro- 
tesque and childish credulity ! By 
what accident, then, we are compelled 
to ask, was an age of myths and fables 
able to develop and set forth the only 
conception of a perfect character ever 
known in our world ? Were these 
four mythologic dreamers, believing 
their own dreams and all others beside, 
the men to produce the perfect charac- 
ter of Jesus, and a system of teachings 
that transcend all other teachings ever 
given to the race? If there be a 
greater miracle, or a tax on hufaan 
credulity more severe, we know not 



Character of Jesus. 159 



where it is. Nothing is so difficult, all 
human literature testifies, as to draw 
a character, and keep it in its living 
proportions. How much more to draw 
a perfect character, and not discolor it 
fatally by marks from the imperfec- 
tion of the biographer. How is it, 
then, that four humble men, in an 
age of marvels and Rabbinical exag- 
gerations, have done it— done what 
none, not even the wisest and great- 
est of mankind, have ever been able 
to do H 

So far, even Mr. Parker concedes the 
right of my argument. "Measure," 
he says, " the religious doc- 
trine Of J eSUS by that Of cess Mr. Par- 
ker concedes. 

the time and place he lived 

in, or that of any time and any place. 



160 Character of Jesus. 


Yes, by the doctrine of eternal truth, j 
Consider what a work his words and 
deeds have wrought in the world. Re- 
member that the greatest minds have 1 
seen no farther, and added nothing to 
the doctrine of religion ; that the rich- I 
est hearts have felt no deeper, and < 
added nothing to the sentiment of re- i 
ligion ; have set no loftier aim, no 
truer method than his, of perfect love 
to God and man. Measure him by the 
shadow he has cast into the world- 
no, by the light he has shed upon it. 
Shall we be told such a man never 
lived ? the whole story is a lie ? Sup- 
pose that Plato and Newton never 
lived. But who did their wonders, 
and thought their thought ? It takes 
a Newton to forge a Newton. What 



Character of Jesus. 161 



man could have fabricated a Jesus ? 
None but a Jesus/' * 

Exactly so. And yet, in the middle 
of the very paragraph from which these 
words are gleaned, Mr. Parker says, 
" We can learn few facts about Jesus ; " 
alsOj that in certain things — to wit, his 
miracles, we suppose— " Hercules was 
his equal, and Vishnu his superior/' 
Few facts about Jesus ! all the mira- 
cles recited of him, as destitute of 
credibility as the stories of Hercules 
and Yishnu ! And yet these evangel- 
ists, retailing so many absurd fictions 
and so much childish gossip, have been 
able to give us a doctrine upon which 
the world has never advanced, a char- 
acter so deep that the richest hearts 

* Life of Jesus, p 863. 
11 I 



162 Character of Jesus. 



have felt nothing' deeper, and added 
nothing to the sentiment of it. They 
have done, that is, the difficult thing, 
and broken down under the easy ! pre- 
served, in the life and discourses of Je- 
sus, what exceeds all human philos- 
ophy, all mortal beauty, and yet have 
not been able to recite the simplest 
facts ! Is it so that any intelligent 
critic will reason ? 

Neither let it be objected that, since 
the miracles have in themselves no 
moral quality, there is no 

TtiG miracles • 

are in place in rational, or valuable, or even 

a gospel. 

proper place for them in a 
gospel, considered as a new-creating 
grace for the world. For it is a thing 
of no secondary importance for a sin- 
ner, down under sin, and held fast in 



Character of Jesus. 163 



its bitter terms of bondage, to see that 
God has entered into his case with a 
force that is adequate. These mighty 
works of Jesus, which have been done 
and duly certified, are fit expressions 
to us of the fact that he can do for us 
all that we want. Doubtless it is a 
great and difficult thing to regenerate 
a fallen nature ; no person, really 
awake to his miserable and dreadful 
bondage, ever thought otherwise. But 
he that touched the blind eyes and 
commanded the leprosy away, he that 
trod the sea, and raised the dead, and 
burst the bars of death himself, can 
tame the passions, sweeten the bitter 
affections, regenerate the inbred dis- 
eases, and roll back all the storms of 
the mind. Assured in this manner by 



164 Character of Jesus. 

his miracles, they become arguments 
of trust, a storehouse of powerful 
images, that invigorate courage and 
stimulate hope. Broken as we are by 
our sorrow, cast down as we -are by our 
guiltiness, ashamed, and weak, and 
ready to despair, we can yet venture a 
hope that our great soul-miracle may 
be done ; that, if we can but touch the 
hem of Christ's garment, a virtue will 
go out of him to heal us. In all dark 
days and darker struggles of the mind, 
in all outward disasters, and amid all 
storms upon the sea of life, we can yet 
descry him treading the billows, and 
hear him saying, "It is I, be not 
afraid/' And lest we should believe 
the miracles faintly, for there is a busy 
infidel lurking always in our hearts to 



Character of Jesus. 165 



cheat us of our faith, when he cannot 
reason it away, the character of Jesus 
is ever shining with and through them, 
in clear self- evidence, leaving them 
never to stand as raw wonders only of 
might, but covering them with glory, 
as tokens of a heavenly love, and acts 
that only suit the proportions of his 
personal greatness and majesty. 

There are many in our day, as we 
know, who, without making any specu- 
lative point of the objection 

Miracles re- 

we are discussing, have so £f&?&£d 
far yielded to the current 
misbelief as to profess, with a certain 
air of self-compliment, that they are 
quite content to accept the spirit of 
Jesus ; and let the miracles go for 
what they are worth. Little figure will 



166 m Character of Jesus. 

they make as Christians in that kind 
of gospel. They will not, in fact, re- 
ceive the spirit of J esus ; for that, un- 
abridged, is itself the Grand Miracle of 
Christianity, about which all the others 
play as scintillations only of the central 
fire. Still less will they believe that 
Jesus can do any thing in them which 
their sin requires. They will only com- 
pliment his beauty, imitate or ape his 
ways in a feeble lifting of themselves, 
but that he can roll back the currents 
of nature, loosened by the disorders of 
sin, and raise them to a new birth in 
holiness, they will not believe. No 
such watery gospel of imitation, sepa- 
rated from grace, will have any living 
power in their life, or set them in any 
bond of unity with God. Nothing but 



Character of Jesus, 167 



to say — " Jesus of Nazareth, a man 
approved of God by miracles and signs 
which God did by him/' can draw the 
soul to faith, and open it to the power 
of a supernatural and new-creative 
mercy. 

We come back, then, to the self- 
evidencing superhuman character of 
Jesus, and there we rest. 

* Jesus nim- 

He is the sun that holds suLknt e$- 

n t n dence. 

all the minor orbs of rev- 
elation to their places, and pours a 
sovereign, self-evidencing light into all 
religious knowledge. We have been 
debating much, and ranging over a 
wide field, in chase of the many phan- 
toms of doubt and false argument, still 
we have not far to go for light, if only 
we could cease debating and sit down 



168 Character of Jesus. 



to see. It is no ingenious fetches of 
argument that we want ; no external 
testimony, gathered here and there 
from the records of past ages, suffices 
to end our doubts ; but it is the new I 
sense opened in us by Jesus himself — 
a sense deeper than words and more ; 
immediate than inference — of the mi- 
raciilous grandeur of his life ; a glorious 
agreement felt between his works and 
his person, such that his miracles them- 1 
selves are proved to us in our feeling, ! 
believed in by that inward testimony. ; 
On this inward testimony we are will- 
ing to stake every thing, even the life 
that now is, and that which is to come, j 
If the miracles, if revelation itself, can- 
not stand upon the superhuman char- 
acter of Jesus, then let it fall. If that 



Character of Jesus. 169 



character does not contain all truth 
and centralize all truth in itself, then 
let there be no truth. If there is any- 
thing worthy of belief not found in 
this, we may well consent to live and 
die without it. Before this sovereign 
light, streaming out from God, the deep 
questions, and dark surmises, and 
doubts unresolved, which make a night 
so gloomy and terrible about us, hurry 
away to their native abyss. God, who 
commanded the light to shine out of 
darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to 
give the light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 
This it is that has conquered the as- 
saults of doubt and false learning in 
all past ages, and will in all ages to 
come. No argument against the sun 



170 Character of Jesus. 



will drive it from the sky. No mole- 
eyed skepticism, dazzled by its bright- 
ness, can turn away the shining it re- 
fuses to look upon. And they who 
long after God, will be ever turning 
their eyes thitherward, and either with 
reason or without reason, or, if need be, 
against manifold impediments of rea- 
son, will see and believe. 

But before we drop a theme like 
this, let us note more distinctly the 
immense significance to our religious 
feeling of this glorious advent of Jesus, 
and have our congratulations in it. 
This one perfect character has come 
into our world, and lived in it ; filling 
all the molds of action, all the terms 
of duty and love, with his own divine 



Character of Jesus, 171 



manners ; works and charities. All the 
conditions of our life are raised thus, 
by the meaning he has shown to be in 
them, and the grace he has put upon 
them. The world itself is changed, 
and is no more the same that it was ; 
it has never been the same since J esus 
left it. The air is charged with heav- 
enly odors, and a kind of celestial con- 
sciousness, a sense of other worlds, is 
wafted on us in its breath. Let the 
dark ages come, let society roll back- 
ward and churches perish in whole re- 
gions of the earth, let infidelity deny, 
and, what is worse, let spurious piety 
dishonor the truth ; still there is a 
something here that was not, and a 
something that has immortality in it. 
Still our confidence remains unshaken, 



172 Character of Jesus. 

that Christ and his all- quickening life 
are in the world, as fixed elements, and 
will be to the end of time ; for Chris- 
tianity is not so much the advent of a 
better doctrine, as of a perfect charac- 
ter ; and how can a perfect character, 
once entered into life and history, be 
separated and finally expelled ? It 
were easier to untwist all the beams 
of light in the sky, separating and ex- 
punging one of the colors, than to get 
the character of Jesus, which is the 
real gospel, out of the world. Look ye 
hither, meantime, all ye blinded aod 
fallen of mankind, a better nature is 
among you, a pure heart, out of some 
pure world, is come into your prison and 
walks it with you. Do you require of 
us to show who he is, and definitely to 



Character of Jesus, 



173 



expound his person ? We may not be 
able. Enough to know that he is not 
of us — some strange being out of na- 
ture and above it, whose name is Won- 
derful. Enough that sin has never 
touched his hallowed nature, and that 
he is a friend. In him dawns a hope 
— purity has not coine into the world, 
except to purify. Behold the Lamb 
of God, that taketh away the sins of 
the world ! Light breaks in, peace 
settles on the air, lo ! the prison walls 
are giving way — rise, let us go. 



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